Remembrance
by Miss Alise
Summary: All Riku and Sora ever wanted was a fun, normal high school senior year. But when they become intimately acquainted with Kingdom Hearts after an accident on the beach, they begin to understand that their world has changed-forever. Slight SxK, RxS main.
1. Prologue

Prologue

I've been in love with Sora Hikari since before I can remember. Not in the romantic sense of the word, but in the sense that I knew I couldn't live without him. He's been my best friend since we were little kids, and he's always been there for me. No matter what I did, he'd be there with a smile and a hand to pull me up off the ground. I knew, even when we were too small to _really_ know, that what Sora and I had was special. Nothing could touch it, nothing would change it, through thick and thin we'd be there with each other.

I remember this stupid pact we made. We were ten years old, and I remember so clearly because that was the day my parents told me that, after fifteen years of marriage, they didn't love each other anymore. 'It's complicated,' they'd said. Anyway, Sora came and found me, crying my eyes out, and told me that we'd never do that. We'd never abandon each other. Suddenly, even though my life was being ripped apart, I knew Sora would be that one thing that kept me grounded. He smiled, with that lame grin that completely ignores everything awful in the world, and held out his pinkie-finger. That was the end of that, but I've never forgotten. It's stuff like that, random things you'd never expect, that made Sora my best friend.

I've thought about it so much, but I don't know when I started feeling something different for him. Maybe it was just a natural progression, I don't know. I know what the trigger was, though, what made me actually _realize_ that I felt something different.

Kairi Nakamura transferred to our middle school about halfway through our eighth grade year. She came with her stylishly bobbed hair, and her big doe eyes, and her sweet smile, and suddenly she was all that Sora ever talked about. I don't think I've ever felt that jealous in my entire life, but I guess I just thought that she was taking my time with my best friend away. But then, after weeks of Sora complaining to me, he finally got up the courage to ask her out. She stole his first kiss, and I saw it. The way my heart felt when I did, like it had been ripped up and tossed away like so much trash, was something that I never wanted to feel again. If that was what love was, I didn't want anything to do with it.

We both started at Destiny Island High in September of that year. I joined the swim team, Sora joined the struggle team, and with Kairi leeching onto him whenever he was free, we spent less and less time together. I felt his absence like a burn in my stomach, always aching and it didn't help that I knew what I felt for him wasn't normal. He'd be disgusted with me, if he found out, and I figured that maybe the distance between us was for the best. Maybe I'd forget whatever the hell it was that ran through me every time I saw him.

Then, I'd see him again, and it would start all over.


	2. Welcome Back

Chapter One

'_One, two, three, four, breathe. One, two, three, four, breathe.'_

Riku slid effortlessly through the water, concentrating on making sure that his form was perfect. He stopped at the end of the lane, breathing evenly and treading water to cool off his body. Resting his arms on the deck, he pulled himself up, shaking the water out of his wet hair.

"Lookin' good, Riku! This is gonna be a good season for you, ya?" Wakka, the school blitzball captain, smiled widely from the other side of the pool. "We're gonna take the cup in watersports this year, I'm telling you!" Riku smirked, rolling his eyes at the red head. He'd grown up with Wakka on the island, and they'd both been training relentlessly. They both knew that this year would be filled with scouts and potential scholarships, and neither of them could afford to slacken the pace.

"Well, Wakka, you'll have your work cut out for you, trying to keep up with me." He walked away, wrapping a towel securely around his waist.

"That's right, you bastard, run away! Don't forget to condition your hair, ya?

Riku smiled one last time, pulling open the locker room door and heading inside. His footsteps echoed strangely as his feet slapped wetly against the tile. Sighing, he quickly packed up his school bag, slipping into a pair of baggy blue jeans and tugging a black tank top over his head.

The locker room had always frightened him a bit, really. It was so cold, so impersonal. Just tile and steel. He felt it even more acutely on nights like this, when everyone but the most dedicated swimmers had long since gone home. As the swim captain, he had a responsibility to the team to be the best he could, and that meant swimming as often as possible, but that didn't mean he appreciated being alone in the locker room at night.

Slamming the locker shut, he picked up his bag and wandered over to one of the mirrors above the sink. His normally bright silver hair had turned dull and limp because of the water, so he shook it out again. He'd let it grow out during the summer, even though it probably wasn't best for his swimming, because he honestly really liked his hair. When Sora had seen it, he'd laughed and called it 'rockstar hair'.

He ran a hand through it, trying to work out the wet tangles. The little water droplets that came from the ends were soaking through his black shirt, creating puddles in the fabric, but he didn't really care. It was warm enough outside that everything would dry quickly. With one last cursory glance at his appearance, he headed towards the door.

"Hey Riku! Were you swimming?" Riku smiled when he looked up, seeing Sora round the corner with a goofy grin plastered to his face. He looked good, Riku noticed. His brown hair was a bit shorter than it had been, and he'd finally hit that growth spurt he'd been praying for since middle school. He was, by no means, tall, but he'd become a little less short.

He had a struggle bat propped against his shoulder; he'd been staying late for the same reason that Riku had.

"Oh, stupid question, why else would you have wet hair?" Sora smacked his forehead with his palm and sighed. "I must be going blind or something. Kairi got a haircut and I totally didn't even notice."

"I'm sure you're fine," Riku said. "How was your trip to Twilight Town? You just got back yesterday, right?"

Sora smirked, rubbing the back of his head with his free hand.

"Yeah. It was awesome! I haven't been there in so long...it was great seeing everyone again. Hayner's on the Twilight Town struggle team this year, you know? It'll be weird, fighting against him for real, and not just in a friendly struggle match." Sora blinked evilly up at Riku, his blue eyes wide and deceptively innocent. "Olette's still crushing on you big time. You were all she talked about. She's actually really cool once you get to know her, you know? It wouldn't hurt to give her a-"

Riku stopped him with a steely look, running his hand through his wet hair again.

"No, Sora. I'm not interested. You know that."

Sora huffed in exasperation, throwing his hands up in the air and accidentally dropping the struggle bat on the ground with a loud 'thunk'.

"But _why not?_ Look at you, Riku! I'm not gonna lie, you're hot! You're smart and built, you're funny and interesting, you could have anyone you want. You know _that_. So, why not? You've never even looked twice at any of the girls that constantly throw themselves at you. It's pissing me off! I mean, I've got Kairi, and we've been together so long, and we're so happy, it makes me mad that you're purposely denying yourself that."

Sora looked up at Riku, sighing at the blank look that had settled across his face.

"You know, Sora, this really isn't the conversation I wanted to open with after two months of not even seeing my best friend. Can't we save this for some other time?"

Suddenly, Riku was tired. Not sleepy, more like mentally exhausted. He really didn't know how much longer he could deal with this. He'd had to hold his tongue for almost four years about Kairi and Sora, and to be reminded at every opportunity that she had what he wanted was driving him completely insane.

"Listen, Sora, I'm not purposely denying myself anything. I'm just not interested, ok? It's that simple. Drop it, alright? I gotta get home. It's late. Do you want a ride?"

Sora nodded, smiling again. Even if he didn't really want to, he knew he'd have to drop the subject. Riku got like that sometimes, especially recently. He could see so much of his best friend being covered up by anger. You weren't friends with someone their entire life and not see when they were hurting.

"Yeah. Can I stay for dinner? I haven't seen you in so long! Plus, your mom makes the best food. That's one thing I can say about Twilight Town, the food there is just a little bit worse than second best." He grinned, and the awkwardness was pushed away into the background. Riku shook his head jokingly.

"You'll never get your mind out of your stomach, will you?"

* * *

"You know, you still have the option of giving me your car. Just a thought."

They sped down the streets of Destiny Island in Riku's black sports car. As he shifted gears, he reached over to pat Sora's shoulder consolingly.

"I think not."

"But, it's not like you need it or anything! You should be walking everywhere anyway, what with you being the swim captain. You've got to stay in shape. I know you don't even like it anymore," Sora teased. He knew that Riku was completely and utterly in love with his car, but to be honest Sora was too.

"Whatever, Sora. Mom's making lasagna, you know. That's not quite as awesome as my car, but it's close. That should tide you over."

Sora's face had lit up at the mention of lasagna, and he threw his fist into the air.

"Awesome! Oh man, I love your mom's lasagna..." He closed his eyes, as if imagining the taste of it in his mouth. Riku wouldn't have been overly surprised had Sora suddenly started drooling.

He smiled as the sea flew by on their left, the sun sparkling brightly off of it's surface. He'd missed Sora so much when he'd been gone for two months to visit Twilight Town. It was strange, the connection that his friend felt with that place. The first time he'd been there, everyone he'd met had felt like they'd seen him somewhere before. The local kids there, Hayner, Pence, and Olette, had instantly liked him, almost in a weird way.

To himself, he could admit that he was jealous that Sora had decided to spend so much time there over the summer. They didn't really see each other anymore outside of school. It seemed a little bit off that Sora would decide to head off to Twilight Town for almost all of their last high school summer break.

"Hey, Sora?" Riku started.

Sora cocked his head to the side, giving him permission to continue with a curious look.

"Do you want to go swimming? We haven't been in a long time."

"You mean in the ocean?" At Riku's nod, Sora sat back, thinking about the request. It seemed odd, coming from his friend. He couldn't imagine that he swam much for pleasure anymore. Whenever he was in the pool at school, he was trying to improve his technique or hasten his strokes, not just feeling the water. Then again, maybe that was why he wanted to do it in the ocean, maybe get a little bit of the pleasure back.

"Sure," he shrugged. "But, _only _after we get lasagna. Your freaky impulsive swimming won't steal that heaven from me."

Riku smiled, finally pulling up in front of his house. Before the car was even off, Sora had shot out of the side door and had begun running up the walkway. Riku took the keys out of the ignition, watching as Sora rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, waiting impatiently for him to come open the door.

"Hurry up, Riku! I swear to God I can smell it from here!" Sora peered around, spotting the open window and running over to it, shoving his nose as close as he could.

The front door opened, revealing a smiling woman with silver hair.

"Is that Sora I hear? Have you finally come back from your otherworldly adventures?"

Sora dropped to his knees, grabbing her hand in his.

"Hana my love! I have returned to you at last, asking for your kind hand in marriage so that you might make me lasagna _every_ night!"

She blushed, laughing.

"You're still such a charmer, Sora. I think I speak for both of us when I say we've missed you around here." She put her hands on her hips, avoiding the spots of marinara sauce that had landed on her apron. "Well, let's not stand out here all day! I have a giant pan of lasagna just waiting for some hungry teenagers to devour it."

Looking as if Christmas had come early, Sora followed her back inside. Riku just stood there, shaking his head, thinking that Sora liked his mother way too much to be normal.

Sora leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach, sighing in bliss. All three of them were collected around the table, dirty dishes forgotten as they enjoyed a peaceful silence.

"Hana," Sora said, "my marriage offer still stands, you know? I swear, your cooking just gets better and better. Though, how that's even possible, I will never know."

Pushing away from the table, Riku wandered around, collecting the plates and stacking them in the sink. Their house wasn't big by any means, so he had to squeeze past the table crammed into their cramped kitchen. When his parents had divorced, it hadn't been one of those pretty 'we just sort of fell out of love' separations. His father had taken everything from his mom except Riku. That was why Hana had to work hard for everything that they got, including the cramped kitchen and the small house.

It was theirs, though, and they loved it.

"As delicious as that was, Mom, Sora and I are going to the beach," Riku said.

"Well, I'm glad you both enjoyed it, anyway. It's good to see you again, Sora. You don't come around here too much anymore. It's like you've grown out of poor Riku and I." She placed her hands over her heart, looking at him with a forlorn expression hiding her smile. "Now, I know Riku has his swim practice, and you have your snuggle team, but you should find more time to come by. It's only fair."

"I don't know, snuggling takes a lot out of a person, Hana." Sora walked over to the hall closet, grabbing a towel from the pile and turning back around, swinging it over his shoulders. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go attempt not to drown." He continued to the back door, walking with an exaggerated swagger.

"Riku, you go out there and make sure that boy doesn't end up hurting himself," she smiled amusedly. Riku grabbed his own towel, hurrying out to catch his friend. Sora was waiting for him in the garden, the one thing that his mother took pride in like nothing else in her life, other than her son.

As they started walking, they could hear the ocean pushing gently against the shore, and they headed towards it. Sora's arms where crossed behind his head, and Riku's hands were stuffed into his pockets as he looked down at the ground. Neither of them spoke, they didn't really feel a need to, but the silence wasn't oppressive or awkward, just there.

The concrete and dirt gradually turned to sand beneath their feet, but they didn't go down to the waterfront immediately. They had to have been less than six when they'd found the little cove, about a mile away from Riku's old house. It was perfect, secluded, with shallows that were safe enough for them to stay in without much danger. It was their secret place; they both knew that's where they were headed.

"I miss you sometimes, Riku, you know?" Sora kept walking, kicking a rock that he'd found along the path. "When Hana said that I don't really come around anymore, she was right. I don't. I'm always either practicing struggle or with Kairi. Hell, I spent the last two months out of town and we didn't even _talk_. Not even once. I didn't call you, you didn't call me, neither of us bothered writing letters. It's weird, you know? We've been friends forever, but it's like the second that high school happened, something got screwed up."

Riku looked up from the ground, choosing instead to let his eyes wander the sky.

"I'm sorry, Sora, because I know exactly what you're talking about. But...it wasn't high school."

Riku knew, in his mind, that this was the ideal time. He could tell Sora everything. He opened his mouth, so close to saying what he'd wanted to say for so long he'd almost forgotten how it felt to be without it. Sora sent him an expectant look, clearly thinking that Riku would elaborate. But, even if he did, what would he say?

'Sorry Sora, but my lust for you is driving us apart'?

No, he knew that Sora had no interest in him like that. If his general attraction to girls wasn't enough, his relationship with Kairi was. He needed to get over his feelings for Sora. He needed to push them to the back of his mind so far that they didn't bother him so much anymore. If his heart still beat a little bit faster when he was near Sora, walking next to him, what of it? He could hide that. He had been for years.

"I don't really know what it was. It probably has to do with the fact that we just didn't have any extra time anymore. Like you said, we both had our sports, you had Kairi, we had nearly no classes together. We still hung out, were still best friends, but we just couldn't spend every waking moment together like we could when we were younger."

"I know that's a big part of it," Sora sighed heavily, "but I also feel like there's more to it than that. It's like...I don't know, like you started treating me differently all of the sudden. Like something had changed, and it's never gone back to the way it was, not really."

Riku didn't like the undertone of sadness that came through in Sora's words, and he reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder. It was terrible that even that motion, which was meant to do nothing but reassure his friend, sent that familiar spike of longing through his veins.

"It's never been you, Sora. You weren't the problem, I was. Me and my incredibly stubborn mind that refuses to let things go. And, I'm sorry, but telling you would just make things worse."

They walked in silence for a while, each thinking about the conversation and everything that it meant for them. It was unusual, really for them to even be talking like that, like those words needed to be said and might not get a chance otherwise.

"We used to be able to tell each other everything, you know? It's sad that we can't anymore."

And that was it, really. That was the problem. Sora hadn't said it to wheedle the information out of Riku, it had just been a statement that things would never be like they used to. They both knew that.

As the cove came into view, Sora stopped, squinting his eyes as if looking for something.

"Hey, Riku, do you see that?" Without waiting for an answer, Sora began hurrying towards the water, his feet kicking up sand as they sank in.

"Sora, wait! What are you looking at? There's nothing there..."

Riku ran after him, trying to catch up but failing. Even with his muscles trained by swimming, Sora seemed to be propelled forward by something unknown, and the distance between them grew wider with each passing moment.

Without even bothering to remove his shoes or his clothes, when Sora reached the shore he just kept walking into the water, stopping only when he was a few meters in, a strange look on his face.

Riku stopped at the water's edge, utterly confused at what Sora found so mesmerizing about a calm stretch of empty water.

"Sora, come on, what's going on? There's nothing out there!"

Sora couldn't hear him, though. The moment he'd seen that figure standing in the ocean, everything else had melted away, and the only thing that mattered was that one, single person, standing there like the world had suddenly stopped.

He recognized him, even from so far away. How could he not? No matter how far away he stood, he'd always be able to recognize his best friend.

When he neared the edge of the water, he looked straight into those aqua eyes, and was shocked to see the differences laying within them. This wasn't the Riku that he knew now, the senior in high school, the captain of the swim team who owned a black sports car and took pride in it. This was the Riku that he used to know, the one that didn't look at him any differently than he had when they were children. His eyes were young, his hair was shorter, he was smaller. For some reason, the Riku that stood in the water was nothing like the Riku that he had come to the beach with.

As the ocean began seeping into his shoes, he walked forwards slowly, worried eyes trained on the body in the water. With a gentle smile, Riku lifted his arm, holding out his hand towards the brunette, gesturing for him to come towards him and take it. With that smile, the one that Sora hadn't seen in so long that it _hurt_, how could he refuse?

A sudden rushing sound pulled him out of his stupor, immediately making him notice what he had failed to before. A giant wave had come out of nowhere, rapidly advancing towards the Riku in the water, towering behind him in a menacing sheet of perfect blue.

"Wait! Riku, look out! Turn around, come on, look out!" Riku's smile never faltered, peaceful and welcoming, and sudden desperation filled Sora. He knew, utterly without doubt, that he just needed to grab hold of the hand offered to him and everything would be fine again. As if in slow motion, his legs pumped harder and the wave kept coming, and all the while Riku just stood there, looking like nothing could change how he felt.

It was useless. Sora knew that. The water was coming too quickly and he'd never been a fast runner. He could feel the salt invade his mouth, drenching him, pulling at his clothes, dripping over everything as it dragged his feet out from under him

How Riku could still be standing there, holding out his hand and ignoring that water, he didn't know, but the current quickly pulled him away, into blackness.

As confused as he was, Riku felt a moment of intense panic when Sora slipped under the water for seemingly no reason. He was too far away still, and even though he was running at full force he knew he couldn't be able to stop him from inhaling unhealthy amounts of salt water. It didn't matter though; he still ran.

A sudden, sharp pain pierced through his skull, bringing him to his knees no matter how much he wanted to keep going.

"Sora!" he called out shakily, before following his friend into blackness.


	3. Old Friends, Old Loves

It was an uncomfortable feeling, Riku decided, to wake up feeling like every muscle in your body had atrophied overnight. He couldn't move, and it felt like someone had replaced all of his limbs with long, thin rocks. Prying his eyes open, he immediately regretted it as bright, luminescent light poured into his mind.

_'Breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Good.'_

He took a deep breath, and opened his eyes again to mere slits that he could just barely see out of. White. Blinding white completely surrounded him in a sterile environment that he knew, quite personally, could belong to only one building on Destiny Islands. Riku tensed suddenly, visions of what had happened at the beach coming back to him, followed by an intense worry for Sora. He didn't know what had happened to him after blacking out. The World That Never Was was created solely for the Nobodies. Who knew what would happen to it once Kingdom Hearts was ruined?.

Desperately trying to raise his hand to block out the light, Riku groaned, sitting up with an intense amount of difficulty. It was like his body was rebelling against him, refusing to function.

A light moan from his other side made him turn his head, and he relaxed a little, seeing a familiar head of messy brown hair crushed against a pillow in the room's other bed. Sora blinked, going through the same motions that Riku did before hastily sitting up and looking around.

"I...thought they'd be here...when they said that they'd be alright, I thought they'd be here with us..." Sora coughed, grabbing the pitcher of water at his bedside and pouring himself a glass. "Roxas, and Axel...I don't..."

He trailed off, and worked the soft hospital blanket through his fingers.

"Sora, I don't understand what happened. But, look around. This isn't the hospital in Disney Castle, or in Atlantica, or Port Royal...this is Destiny Islands. This is where we were before. Xemnas is gone, but so is everything else."

Looking around, he knew he was right. All the time he'd spent volunteering at that hospital in high school had permanently etched its whiteness into his brain. The click of the doorknob turned their attention to the door, and they saw a thin woman in a white nurse uniform outside the glass window.

"Oh good! You're both awake. We were hoping you'd wake up soon, you know, because we really don't know what's wrong with either of you. Young man," she looked towards Riku, "your mother found you passed out on the beach along with this poor boy. Neither of you were injured, so we were really at a loss to explain what had happened. We were hoping you'd be able to tell us when you both woke up."

Riku glanced at Sora, trying to figure out what they should tell the doctors. How could they tell them what had happened when they didn't even know?

"Umm..." Sora began, "how long were we...unconscious?"

She smiled, a bright, disarming smile that was probably the first thing they learned in nursing college.

"Well, it's been about eight hours since you arrived here. I couldn't say how long you were unconscious on the beach before that, though." She bustled around the room, checking the machines that still emitted a steady beeping. "Well, everything looks good! I'll have the doctor in to check on you, see if we can figure out what's wrong now."

She left the room, leaving an oppressive silence behind her. Everything that had happened to them, Maleficent, Oxganization XIII, the final battle with Xehanort and Xemnas, the search for Kairi and the search for each other, had happened in less that a day? That was impossible. It was ridiculous. And it was too real to have been imagined.

Sora looked down at his hand, turning it back and forth, pinching the skin between his fingers.

"I can't feel him anymore, Riku...I dont' think he's inside me anymore." At Riku's confused look, Sora continued. "Roxas, you know? My... nobody. I thought he'd be here when we woke up, that somehow destroying The Organization would set its members free or something stupid like that." He pressed his hand against his forehead. It was strange, Riku thought, that no matter how impressive Sora was when handling a weapon, he had no faith in his mind.

"Well, if he's not inside you anymore, he has to be somewhere, doesn't he? Just because he's not in the hospital with us doesn't mean he's not alive. We have other things to worry about right now, though. Whatever happened to him and Axel isn't going to change in the next few minutes."

"I just don't get it, Riku. It's like...there are two different lives for us. Like we have this one where everything is just normal and sane and you're the swim captain and I'm the struggle captain and I have Kairi, then there's this other one where we're put in charge of saving the fucking _world_ and nothing makes _sense_ right now!"

He tried to throw the covers off of him, but his arm didn't move all the way, making him just wrinkle them instead. With a frustrated groan, he fell back onto the bed, pressing a pillow over his face.

"Alright, we need to figure out exactly what's going on. I think we're both in agreement that everything really happened. There's no way we could have both been imagining something so completely real." He ran his fingers through his silver hair, feeling how slicky it felt from the chlorine that he'd never managed to wash out, and wincing. "The problem is, what impact did that universe have on this one? If it had any? Clearly, whatever we did there didn't make much of a difference to our normal lives. Hell, getting rid of the source of the Heartless took over a year and a half and we were only out for a little more than eight hours? It makes absolutely no sense."

Sora pulled the pillow off his face, hugging it to his chest in thought. His bright blue eyes looked over towards Riku, confused and disoriented. His fingers twitched as if aching to feel the keyblade in his fist again.

"I think...I think we need to find someone else who knows. Because this isn't something that we're just going to be able to figure out on our own, you know? This is something way bigger than us."

Riku found himself nodding in agreement. Even though they;d been through it all, there was no guarantee that it would change anything about their normal lives. It would be hard, coming back from all that to have swimming and scholarships as the only thing on his mind. It didn't help that, no matter what he'd done in that other world, the other boy still got his blood rushing through his veins.

"Riku..." Sora began, shifting guiltily in his bed, "there's something that's bothering me. I know it's probably nothing, but I can't stop myself from thinking about it anymore..." He trailed off, picking at the blanket still grasped in his fingers.

"What?"

"Well, it's just that, when we were, you know, fighting evil and whatnot, I was looking for you and Kairi, right? That's what I wanted. I wanted to find you guys again, because you were all that really mattered, you know? But...there was something wrong, when I saw Kairi again. She looked the same as she does here, with her hair like that, and she was just as pretty and kind but..." He looked away, shaking a little bit. "But, I didn't love her. She was the exact same girl, but she was just my friend, and I don't know why I felt like that."

Silence descended upon the room, blanketing them. For the life of him, Riku couldn't figure out what to say to the confession. On one hand, he was happy, because Sora falling out of love with Kairi meant that he had a better chance, but Sora was also his best friend. His happiness meant the world to him. Sora had been so thrilled to be with Kairi that he couldn't really imagine them not being together. He couldn't help but picture Sora as a depressed wreck, and it was something that he didn't want to see.

"Why don't you just wait. Wait until this Kairi comes to see you. Maybe you didn't love the other Kairi because you felt like you were somehow being unfair to your girlfriend. Maybe you knew it wasn't really her." He shrugged. "And, if it turns out that something's changed, well, you'll have to figure out where you want it to go from there."

"Right. What am I saying? Of course you're right, you're always right." The words came out of Sora's mouth almost bitterly, and he blinked, taken aback. Sora didn't usually take out his anger on people, which was his primary reason for joining the struggle team, so Riku had rarely been on the receiving end of it.

"Don't be an ass, Sora." It was a warning, and Sora took it as such, instantly looking away.

"Sorry..." he bit out. The arrival of Hana took their minds off of the almost-argument, but the look in her eyes warned them that the ensuing one wouldn't be any easier.

"What the hell were you two doing out there? I come looking for you, after you're gone for a few hours, and what do I find? Sora face down in the water, looking for all the world like a dead person, and you, passed out on the beach! When Sora joked about trying not to drown, I didn't think he was that serious. You both could have _died_. Do you understand? Personally, I don't get how Sora managed to survive. You're both seniors in high school. You should be capable of going out without killing yourselves!"

Her fists were clenched tightly, and her eyes burned with anger. Behind that, though, they both knew that she was incredibly frightened.

"Mom, I know that you probably won't believe me, but something strange happened to us while we were at the beach. If what you're saying is true, Sora was passed out, face down in that water, for _hours._ That's impossible. Trust me when I say that it wasn't our fault that this happened."

Softening her eyes, she walked over, cupping Riku's cheek with her hand.

"I believe you. You and Sora care for each other too much to let each other die, but, what if I hadn't come looking for you? I wouldn't have bothered, but Sora, you left your phone at our house, and your parents called, looking for you..." Rubbing her thumb back and forth, she frowned, looking intently into Riku's bright aquamarine eyes.

"What, Mom?"

"Something's...changed. You look different." She looked over at Sora, too, seeing the same change within him. "What's happened? You guys look really _old_ all of a sudden. Like you grew up in eight hours"

"Sorry Hana, but that's not too far from the truth, you know?" Sora had given up his bitter attitude, feeling disgusted with himself for taking it out on Riku in the first place, and had pushed himself back up in the bed. His limbs still felt like lead, but he was getting used to it. The final battle with Xemnas had taken everything they'd had.

"He's right, Mom," Riku agreed. "Because of that, things might be a little rough for a while."

"Well," she slapped her hands onto her thighs, standing up, "if that's how it is, that's how it is! Hopefully you boys have finished being idiots and I won't have to start looking after you again."

The two friends shared an amused look. Everything was far from over, but Hana was right. If that's how it was, that's how it was.

* * *

"Have you seen the new guy? I mean, look at him!"

"I _know_! He's so strange! Who gets tattoos like that on their face? And he's so skinny, like he doesn't eat at all or something. And that hair, don't even get me started!"

"Oh, but he's so _cute_! It's that bad-boy image, you know? We don't have enough guys like that here. Where do you even get clothes like that? They don't sell them around here."

"I hear he's from the big city. Traverse Town, or something."

It wasn't the first time that Riku had heard people talking about this new student, and he knew the description intimately from his days involved in Organization XIII. The timing was too perfect for this gangly, tattooed youth with violent red hair to be anyone other than the infamous Number 8, better known, to him, as Axel.

The only problem was, no matter how hard he looked for the guy, he couldn't manage to track him down.

"Riku!" He looked up from his musing to see a head of auburn hair poking through the throng of students. He hadn't spoken to Kairi since the accident, hadn't felt a need to. The Kairi that he'd fought for wasn't around anymore. That much he'd figured out.

She pushed her way through the group of students, fighting to stand next to him.

"Can I talk to you real quick?" Riku raised an eyebrow, knowing that it probably had something to do with Sora. That was the only reason she really spoke to him anymore.

"Sora's been avoiding me, I know he has...and every time I try to talk to him about it, he just gets all tense and changes the subject or gives me these lame monosyllabic answers. Do you know what's up?"

For a brief moment, Riku entertained the idea of telling her the truth, that his best friend wasn't interested anymore, but put it aside sadly. He knew that it wouldn't be worth it, but he savored the picture anyway.

"I don't know. I think he's just out of it. Trust me, you don't almost drown and then just bounce right back from it, even if you are someone like Sora. Give him time. A lot of times, something like that screws you up really badly."

Suddenly, it was like he could feel sand beneath his fingers and a cold chill to the air. In front of his eyes, he could see that door that had seemed to be the answer to everything opening up wide.

"_The door into light...We'll go together!"_

He could almost remember the way Sora had felt, sitting next to him on that beach filled with wet, dark sand. It wouldn't have been too bad, really, staying there forever. The only person that had really mattered to him at that point had been right there beside him; that was all he'd cared about.

Yeah, something like battling their way through darkness really could screw someone up.

"Do you think he'll be alright soon? I miss him..." Kairi's words cut through his reverie, reminding him that no matter what happened with Sora, someone was going to get hurt. Even if he hated what Kairi and Sora were to each other, he had nothing against the girl herself, and she loved Sora, just like he did. He knew how it felt.

"Sure. He'll get over it. Just give him time." She smiled at him, patting him on the shoulder as a goodbye, and hurried down the hall out the front door. Smiling sadly, Riku turned around, knowing that he should head down to the pool to practice but not really wanting to.

Ever since they'd come back, everything that he'd done before just seemed to mundane, so _normal_. It was making him rather angry, actually, knowing that he'd never felt that way before. He'd been perfectly happy with his life. He was captain of the swim team, and he'd already been contacted by three colleges about possible full-rides. He was popular, but he still did well in class. So, maybe he wasn't happy, per se, but he'd at least been satisfied.

Then Sora just _had_ to go run off into the ocean and pass out.

A flash of red caught his eye, but that was the only warning he had before finding himself slammed against the wall behind him.

"What _the fuck_ is going on?" Riku looked up into furious green eyes, trying to swallow nonchalantly even with the fist around his throat.

"If you'll put me down, I might be able to tell you, Axel." Relief flooded through him when his feet were stable on the ground again, even though the vicious glare still kept him pinned firmly against the wall.

"Everything is going fine, then you and that punk show up, suddenly Roxas is _nowhere_ and I'm dying and now I'm here and I have a 'family' who I've never even _seen_ before. I come here, because this is where they told me to go, and who do I see? You. And your _punk_. Got it memorized?" he ran a hand through his wild hair, making it stick up even more, and spun away from Riku, pacing along the floor.

"To be honest, we don't know much more than you do. Sora and I just sort of...woke up after everything was done with The Organization. We used to live here, before everything happened, and now we live here again. We were just waiting around for someone else who went through it to tell _us_ what's going on."

"Fuck..." he kicked the wall, and it thudded dully against his boots. "Do...do you know where Roxas is?"

Riku opened his mouth, intent on spitting out a cutting, sarcastic reply, but when he saw the look in Axel's eyes, he shut it again. They were so filled with sadness. He looked lost and disappointed, something that Riku recognized because he saw it in his own eyes every single time he looked in the mirror.

"We've been looking; Sora wants to find him too. But no, we haven't." He thought for a moment, before grabbing his bag off the floor where it had fallen. "Come on, follow me."

Riku didn't really know where they were going, somewhere they could talk without being overheard, he supposed, but he just kept walking anyway with Axel at his side. Soon, they could both hear the waves crashing against the shore and see the light reflecting off the water's surface.

"Are you sure Roxas is even coming back? I mean, didn't he merge with his somebody? How do you know that would be reversed even with all this other stuff going on?"

Riku shrugged.

"Sora says he can't feel him inside anymore. Whatever that means, he seemed sure enough about it." Shoving his hands into his pockets, he looked up at the sky that was filled with sinking sunlight. "I didn't know Roxas too well, really. About as much as I know you. But I know Sora, and if Roxas is Sora's nobody then he has to be a lot like him, and I know he'd never just let himself disappear."

They stopped, watching as the sun began to dip below the water, silent only because neither had anything that they wanted to say. While the animosity had cooled, the distrust remained. Hearing a sigh, Riku looked over, meeting Axel's vibrant green eyes.

"I died, you know. I'm surprised that I'm actually here, living, even if it's not like it was before. All I'm saying is that, if I'm here, maybe the other guys that died are here too, the other Organization members. I miss a lot of them. They were good people, they just wanted something that they were told they didn't have. I mean, Demyx hated fighting. He'd rather play that stupid sitar of his any day. And you should have seen the way Marly bitched about the fact that The World That Never Was had no flowers. They didn't deserve what they got. Maybe me being here means that they'll get another chance."

He kicked at the ground with his boot, squinting as he looked at the sunset. Looking over at him, Riku felt a strange emotion well up inside of him. Pity maybe? Inwardly smiling, he realized that he had absolutely no idea.

"Yeah," he said, turning to look behind them where it was already getting dark, "maybe."


	4. Life, Upended

Sora fell over onto the struggle mat, exhausted. He'd worked himself over, simultaneously hoping that his keyblade might show up if he wanted it badly enough and knowing that it wouldn't. It didn't help that he'd tried to cast a Cure on himself and it hadn't worked.

"This sucks. I'm not gonna lie. This _really_ sucks." Closing his eyes, he relaxed his muscles, almost able to feel his body sinking into the mat.

"You talking to yourself now, Sora? That's the sign of a lunatic, you know. Or an idiot, in your case."

Seifer. Sora knew that he was intensely bitter about losing the captainship to him, especially now that he'd thought he might get it anyway with Sora in the hospital. Sighing and knowing he wasn't in the mood for it today, he rolled over and turned away from the blond boy.

"Just stop, Seifer. Can't you get off my back for once?"

Fighting with some jackass teenager over some stupid captaincy seemed so unimportant to him now, after everything else that had happened. He'd...he wasn't happy about it, but he'd _killed _people...even if they were getting in the way of something important...He'd made friends that he'd never see again, people who he missed so badly already. He wished he could hack into the other universe, transport himself there with the click of a button like he could to the Space Paranoids, but he knew that wasn't how it worked.

Something had happened to him, had happened to Riku too, and he could say with an incredible certainty that neither of them would ever be quite the same because of it.

"Whatever. If you keep fighting like that anyway, you're going to lose the captaincy. I don't know why you're suddenly fighting so violently, but if it doesn't stop, they're just going to kick you off the team. Not like I care or anything, but there it is."

As he watched Seifer walk away, struggle bat over his shoulder, he decided that what the other boy had said made a lot of sense. Before, when he struggled, the only thing he'd been trying to do was lock in points. He'd been careful about the moves he used, only using those that he knew would deal absolutely no permanent damage. Now, he fought to kill.

So, yeah, it made sense that his style had changed.

Outside the windows, the sun began to sink in the sky, telling him that he'd been laying down on that mat for way too long. He couldn't lie to himself, these blackout moments were beginning to scare him a little. Ever since his return, he'd had them more and more often. He'd sit down in class only to have it end a second later without him having heard a single word out of the teacher's mouth.

Hearing footsteps gently patter on the mat, he turned over, coming face to face with a pair of black shoes laced over with red straps. They followed the body up, finally coming to rest on eyes that were the exact same color as his own.

Scrambling to his feet, he opened his mouth to say something, anything, but his throat had closed up. He was like looking into a mirror at what he could have been, this blond boy standing in front of him. Even though he'd never met him face to face, he knew who it was. How could he not, when he was as much a part of him as his own two hands?

"R...Roxas?" The word stuttered out of his mouth, like a horse tripping before even leaving the starting gate. What could he possibly say? This was someone who had been a _part_ of him, had felt everything that he'd felt and had lived vicariously through his body. He had been forced to end his own life so that Sora could continue to live his. What did you say to someone who had to give up so much for you?

Strangely, nothing came to mind.

"I'm sorry."

It seemed cheep, worthless, but it was the only thing that he could possibly think of to break the oppressive silence invading the gym.

"It's alright, Sora. I guess, with me being here, and you being here too, that it's over now anyway. It's not like it was a choice that either of us were given the opportunity to make."

Sora nodded dumbly, words failing him. He looked down at his hand, still wrapped loosely around his struggle bat, feeling suddenly like the biggest fool on the planet. Roxas looked exactly as he'd expected him to, really.

_'Why does everyone keep calling me Roxas?'_

Now he knew why.

"I've been trying to figure out how to approach you for a couple of days now...going through every possible scenario in my head. I didn't know how I was supposed to feel, you know? You were portrayed as sacred or something...the first time I saw you, suspended there, I saw so much of myself in you but...the only reason for that was because I wasn't supposed to exist. I don't know why I couldn't bring myself to hate you for everything that your presence made happen. I had a life, you know? Even if I wasn't meant to have it, I still did; a life as a nobody was still an existence. Because of you, I couldn't even have that."

Sora looked away, guilt written on every facial feature. It didn't matter that he'd been as much a victim of fate as Roxas had, because he hadn't had to suffer for it. Roxas had every reason to hate him, every right.

"Namine tried to convince me that joining with our other half wouldn't make us disappear, that it would make us whole and complete instead, but it didn't. I'd have brief moments of being conscious through you, when you were feeling something really strongly and couldn't handle it all on your own. I was...aware, I suppose...when Axel died, and when you saw Riku for the first time again, stuff like that. It wasn't nearly enough, but it kept me feeling a _little_ bit human."

He lifted his arms, folding them behind his head, standing in an exact replica of the pose that Sora himself loved to abuse.

In that moment, he realized that Roxas wasn't his nobody. That was ridiculous, unfair, and inhumane, a cookie-cut label that subsequently didn't fit anyone. Roxas was a human being, someone who shared more with him than anyone else ever would, but a human nonetheless. Looking him directly in the eye, Sora stood up straight.

"What are you going to do now that you're free?"

After a smile, Roxas appeared thoughtful, clearly having thought that this was never a question he'd be asked.

"I don't know...find out if Axel's still alive, then figure out what to do from there. This is all...very strange. I can't really say that I know what's going on, but after everything else, I think it's time for me to let things just happen."

"Well, that's the one thing I can help you with." At Roxas' confused look, Sora continued. "Riku ran into Axel a couple of days ago."

Roxas' legs almost crumpled beneath him as he sagged in relief. Seeing this, Sora smiled as brightly as he could manage.

"I know. It's how I got when I found out that Riku was alive. We can go see him, if you want?" He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, still completely unsure of how he should be acting. Before Roxas had a chance to say anything in return, Sora blushed, remembering something that Riku had told him.

"Actually, it might be a better idea for me to just let you two get reacquainted by yourselves ."

"Why?"

A nervous laugh.

"Well, you see, he sort of...hates me for what I did to you?" Sora gently tapped the struggle bat against his thigh, looking down. He didn't blame Axel, really. Even though he was the keyblade master, and everything had seemed to revolve around his success, he'd been more of a tool than anything. He'd never held all the cards. Maybe, if he'd been more heeding to the sacrifices he was forcing people to make, fewer terrible things would have happened.

_'He was the only one I liked. He made me feel like I had a heart.'_

He'd replayed those words, over and over again like they were a roll of film on repeat, and every time he'd felt the most intense guilt of his life. Axel had every right to hate him, just like Roxas had.

"Axel knows all about being a nobody, Sora. He knows that what happened wasn't your fault. He's probably just...worried. Like I was. If he hadn't been alive here, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have bothered sticking around. We don't _have_ anyone else. It's just me and him. When he sees that we're both alright, he'll cool off a little bit." He shrugged, feeling that the situation would resolve itself on its own.

"Alright." Sora began heading towards the door, ruffling a hand quickly through his messy hair. "We'll have to see Riku first, because I have no idea where Axel would be right now."

They grinned at each other, excited. It was made all the better because their smiles were exactly the same.

* * *

"Where are you staying, Roxas?"

The blond boy blinked, seemingly coming out of a thoughtful daze. Sora smirked, knowing how excited Roxas was to see Axel again.

"Huh?"

"Where are you staying? I mean, Axel came to this...dimension with a ready-made family and everything else he'd need to start a life here. What about you? What did the higher-ups give you?"

"Uhh..." he stopped, thinking for a moment. "I don't think our situations are the same because my...because Sora exists here as well. No one at the Organization knew who Axel came from, except, most likely, the Superior, but I'm guessing that's whose life he got in this realm. If Sora had died or failed to return, I probably would have gotten his life. As it is...well, I didn't."

"Way to make me feel lame," Sora laughed. "You almost make me sorry that I managed to survive!"

"Don't say that, Sora," Riku bit out harshly, shocking the car into silence. The brunette jerked back like Riku had physically smacked him across the face.

"I'm joking. Don't be so uptight all the time, alright?"

"No!" He slammed his hand against the gearshift, his other hand clutching the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles impossibly white. "You _did _almost die. Several times, if I recall correctly. Don't even joke about surviving, because you almost didn't!"

Refusing to look at either of them, Riku kept his eyes riveted on the road in front of them. Sora looked behind his seat, catching Roxas' gaze with a confused tilt of his head and shrug of his shoulders. If there was one thing that made Sora angry, it was having someone pissed of at him for a reason that he didn't understand.

"Riku, what's your problem? It's like you've been walking around this whole year with a giant stick up your ass! I don't get it. Are you sick of me or something? Are you purposely trying to kill what we have together? Because that's sure what it seems like." He stopped, drumming his fingers against his thigh, trying desperately to pull the words out of his brain that had never seemed so reluctant.

From the backseat, Roxas smirked.

Inside, Riku was panicking. The last thing he wanted to do was push Sora away from him, but he was just so _sick_ of tamping down everything. It pushed out at the worst times, making him take his frustration out on the one person who didn't deserve it. He'd _seen _how strong Sora was, he _knew_ that he'd been through some seriously dangerous situations and had lived to tell the tale. But, he also knew that there had been some close calls, and even thinking about it nearly sent him into full panic mode every single time.

'Well,' he thought, 'I'll just have to try harder to keep control.'

"How am I supposed to face everyone, Sora?"

As if by magic, the angry look on his friend's normally happy face was replaced by a hesitant smile as he shook his head in disbelief.

"Are you still worried about that? I already told you, like this!" The face he made brought them both back to that moment, standing there, both horribly unsure about what would come next for them and only one willing to show it.

"I'm sorry."

"It's ok. I get it now."

Just like that, the uneasiness was gone, replaced by empathy. This was what he'd missed in the dark, this easy camaraderie, this silent understanding. The silence filled the emptiness more fully than any amount of words ever could have. That was him and Sora, what made their friendship different from any other that he'd known.

Soon enough, though, they were pulling into Axel's driveway, and Roxas was sprinting up the driveway, belting out Axel's name for the whole world to hear. His smile ripped his face in half when the front door opened, revealing his favorite lanky redhead.

"Axel!" With a running leap, they collided, and Roxas clung to him, cupping Axel's face and desperately pressing their lips together.

From the car, both boys looked on with identical raised eyebrows, before Riku just shook his head, gently pushing the car into reverse. Block after block of houses flashed by the windows, Sora's eye twitching, the curiosity killing him. When he couldn't take it anymore, he turned to Riku, confused even further by the small smile gracing his features.

"That was a shocker..."

Rising to the carefully laid bait, Riku nonchalantly danced his fingers across the steering wheel.

"Not really," he said.

* * *

Sora rolled over in bed again, frustrated. It was one of those nights filled with tossing and turning, tangled with restless thoughts. The lights from the rare passing cars flitted like animals across the wall, followed by their shadows. It was no use. He knew he wasn't going to be getting any sleep. His head was pounding behind his eyes, filled with useless things.

It was stupid, he knew, but even with everything that had happened, the one thing that didn't matter was the one thing he couldn't get over.

_'He wasn't surprised at all...not even a little...'_

Axel and Roxas had literally _jumped_ each other, and all Riku had done was sit there and smirk about it! It was ridiculous! How would he even know? It wasn't like he knew anything about relationships to begin with.

Even if he only admitted it to himself, the whole situation was driving him absolutely insane.

"Welp, you just gotta figure it out for yourself then!"

Sora jolted up in bed, eyes wide and looking for the person who'd spoken so close to him he could feel their breath on his ear. Flipping on the light, he squinted, searching every corner of the room. Goofy wasn't there.

"Ok, that was weird..." And, he admitted, incredibly scary. He wouldn't say that he was frightened of the dark anymore, but it seemed reasonable to be a bit unnerved if someone appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night.

It wasn't like he hadn't thought about Goofy and Donald since the final battle. Far from it, in fact. He missed them, though he assumed that they were back where they started, at Disney Castle with King Mickey. It was, after all, what they'd been trying to accomplish all along. He missed their weird friendship, and how their bickering had always managed to get him to relax and laugh. They'd gotten him out of so many tough situations, and had never ridiculed him for the stupid mistakes that he hadn't been able to help making.

He hoped he'd be able to thank them one day.

"Well, of course you will! Not like you need to though, really."

Falling out of the bed in surprise at hearing the new voice, he let out a frustrated half-scream, gripping his hair in his hands.

"OK, this is really starting to freak me out, you guys!"

He was answered by the deep silence of a house that was asleep and dark.

"Alright, I'm just being paranoid. I've been thinking about them a lot lately! And now I'm just pretending that I can hear them because I miss them. Right." He stood up, breathing deeply in and letting the breath slowly out. "I'll just go to bed, and when I wake up in the morning everything will be perfectly- OH MY GOD!"

Sora shrieked, a sound coming out of his mouth that he hadn't even known was possible, his heart pounding so fast that he thought it might just rip out of his chest. The two chippies on his bed looked up at him, smiling happily, as if appearing on someone's bed in the middle of another dimension was something totally ordinary.

"Hey Sora!" They squeaked. "How's it goin'?"

He really didn't know how to answer that question. Either he was seeing and hearing impossible things and most likely going insane, or Chip and Dale really _were_ on his bed, and something bad was going on. Damn it, he thought, and I was stupid enough to think that everything was finally over.

"It's going good," he shrugged, choosing the easiest answer. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he danced his fingers across his thigh, nervously waiting for them to say something, _anything_.

"Well, we don't really have a lot of time to just sit around chatting, so we'll get right to it. King Mickey sent you and Riku back here, to your original realm, along with quite a few others that got innocently caught up in the backlash of Organization XIII, to try and give you normal lives. It was the least he could do after dragging you away from all of this to fight a battle that shouldn't have even been yours to fight." He looked over at his partner, nodding.

"Right. He thought that, with the Organization gone and the heartless under control, he'd be able to keep everything under control with his own forces. The King has more than enough resources to take care of any of the usual problems that might come up. Unfortunately, no one could have seen this coming."

Despite the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Sora kept listening.

"We were on our way back from Halloween Town, after delivering our reserve shipment there. When we got to the Gummi Hangar, something seemed really weird. The machinery was too quiet. It could have been a routine check or electrical problem, everything in there is really delicate, but they usually try to get it back up and running before any of the Gummi ship's return, and there wasn't even anyone else in the hangar. Something just felt...off."

The exchanged a nervous glance, their whiskers twitching strangely.

"When we got into the castle proper, there was nobody there. There weren't any soldiers on patrol, nobody waiting for an audience with the King, no one. That was when we noticed the weird smell coming from the audience chamber. I wouldn't say that it was a greasy smell, not really, but it _was_ sort of similar to the way the hangar smelled, only a lot more overpowering. And, oh, when we opened the doors, there was...there was..." he trailed off, rubbing his paw against his face harshly, quivering.

"We saw King Mickey. Dead."


	5. Old Enemies, Old Times

Riku's eyes widened, and his hand flew up to cover his mouth.

"Do they...do they know who did it?"

The sun was barely cresting the horizon, casting dark shadows against the two boys standing on Riku's front stoop. With his knees no longer fully supporting him, the silver haired boy leaned against the door jamb, his head lowered and his shoulders shaking softly. Through everything that had happened to him, King Mickey had been there to keep him sane. When he felt like the darkness had finally managed to invade every inch of his soul, Mickey would bring the light back to him, reminding him of everything that he had to live for. To think that he was gone, brutally murdered in his own castle, almost destroyed the little hope he'd let himself build.

Sora shook his head.

"Chip and Dale couldn't find a single person in the castle. I mean, Donald was his fucking _magician_ for God's sake! If anyone would have given their life for the King, it would have been Donald, but he wasn't even in the world. Plus, Chip and Dale had the only functional gummi ship. No one should have been _able_ to escape."

"You're underestimating Mickey, Sora."

Riku's voice was ragged with emotion, but he stood all the straighter for it.

"He would have found another way to get everyone out."

Sora shook his head sadly, shoving his hands in his pockets. Death on the battlefield, he knew how to handle. You pay your respects, then move on. Because that's what you _had_ to do. Cold blooded murder was something entirely different for him.

"Honestly, it doesn't really matter what happened to everyone. I'm not saying that I don't care, but...Chip and Dale asked me to come back, to see if I could figure anything out. Whether the whole castle died or not isn't going to change what I have to do, just what I find. I'm leaving as soon as they get back with the full sized gummi ship. I'd...like it if you'd come with me, but I understand if you don't want to."

When Riku hesitated before giving his answer, it wasn't because he didn't want to go. The thought of Sora getting hurt again because he was in a dangerous situation, alone, was enough to make him feel sick. But he'd gotten to known Mickey really well, and whatever had finally managed to take him down would have been powerful beyond belief. He had his doubts that Sora, even with his help, would be able to handle something that could kill King Mickey.

They would need reinforcements.

_'Is this the end?'_

What had Axel said? That, if he was still alive, then it was likely that others were too?

"I want you to go check it out, Sora. Go with Chip and Dale, scope around, see what we're dealing with. While you do that, I'll look for any surviving members of Organization XIII and see if they have any interest at all in helping us out. I have a feeling that we're going to need all the help we can get on this one."

Truthfully, he was worried about Sora. Since they'd gotten back, he'd been acting strange, like something was bothering him. Riku knew from experience that even such a tiny break in your resolve could potentially crack wide open, leading you towards the darkness.

All the people that claimed to be scared of it hadn't really been exposed to it, or they would have understood that the darkness wasn't frightening, but _beautiful._ It envelops you, caressing every single physical inch of your skin, learning everything there is to know about you in a single instant. When it enters your mind, it wipes everything else away, leaving only its own perversely intimate emptiness. When you finally succumb to it, and the cold, omnipresent darkness is the only thing you care about, you wonder why you ever bothered denying its hold on you. It becomes the most comforting thing in the entire world; overpowering and addicting and intoxicating all at once.

He was afraid that if Sora accidentally stumbled into the darkness, he'd get sucked in like Riku had.

"Ok. I can manage that, I think." He breathed shakily, running a nervous hand through his soft, brown hair. "This just really sucks, you know? I feel like there's something epic right around the corner and no matter how hard I look I can't see what it is."

The early-morning silence descended over the boys, blanketing them in slightly cool air left over from the nighttime darkness. The sound of a gummi port appearing in the street behind them reminded them both that they didn't have _time_ to stand around, thinking about what might happen. It was time to do what Sora did best: sit down, shut up, and face the music.

* * *

As the gummi ship gently docked in the Disney Castle gummi hangar, Sora felt an unexpected pang in his chest. It looked exactly the same as the last time he'd seen it, brightly colored and happy, but the moment he stepped off the ship, the oppressive silence pounded on his ears. He wanted to scream, just to break it.

"Uh-oh..." Sora looked over at Chip, whose nose was twitching rapidly, whiskers atwitter. "It's down here too, now. Can you smell it? Kinda like someone mixed engine grease with something organic and it started rotting..."

Now that he mentioned it, Sora _could_ smell it. It wasn't strong – his nose didn't compare to Chip and Dale's noses in the slightest – but it was definitely there. As a headache began to form behind his eyes, he decided that it wasn't a scent that he particularly enjoyed, either.

When they emerged into the courtyard, he was shocked at how different everything had become. The grass that had been so vividly green last time he'd seen it had turned a dull grey color, and the smell that had been barely noticeable below hit him full force the moment he stepped into the open. There was only one way to describe everything around him, how everything smelled and felt and tasted.

Dead.

Sucking in a breath, Sora slowly pushed open the double doors leading to the audience chamber. He didn't want to look. He'd have given anything to _not have to look_, but he did. It wasn't like he'd expected it to be, if he'd really expected anything. The King wasn't decomposing, and it was obvious that he wasn't what was causing the greasy smell. Truly, it looked like he had just sort of...fallen asleep in the chair and never gotten back up.

"Listen, guys, not to sound...rude or anything, but should he really still look like that? I mean...he doesn't even look _dead_. It's been awhile, hasn't it?"

The chippies looked at each other, nodding in that silent way that they seemed to do most things lately, and Chip met Sora's gaze.

"He's been there for five months."

Inexplicably, that statement brought shocked tears to Sora's ears, though he refused to let them fall. King Mickey had been a good leader, no matter what the keybearer might have thought of his methods. For him to have died, alone in his audience chamber, his audience gone by his own hand, seemed too cruel to be real. But it was, it _was _real.

_'Goddamnit,' _he thought, _'If Riku sees this, it'll break his heart.'_

He'd been lying to himself, thinking that he wanted this life back. He'd allowed himself to forget how much he felt like throwing up after the battles, knowing that he'd caused other people pain. He'd allowed himself to forget how _used_ he'd been, how he'd been nothing other than the tool of the light, the _chosen one_. He'd forgotten that, after all of the battles were over, no one _really_ won. That was what got to him the most, really. No matter how much he fought, there would still be evil, still be darkness, because everyone harbored it inside of them like a shadowed candle that never went out.

He was fighting a losing battle, and he didn't want to fight at all anymore.

"To tell you guys the truth, I don't really know where to go from here. Before, everyone just told me where to go. If I didn't get a clue from King Mickey, Donald and Goofy were there to help me out, you know?" He stopped, wanting to avoid going any closer to the deceased king but knowing that they had to have access to the room underneath the throne.

If the castle occupants had left a clue, anything at all, it would be in that hidden room.

Straightening his shoulders, he took a deep breath, and began walking forward.

* * *

Riku knew that the time ratio from his home to the realm of King Mickey was very odd, and that every second wasted could potentially equate to wasted days where Sora was, so he quickly shut the door, heading for his car.

Axel's house was the obvious starting point. He didn't know if Axel and Roxas would agree to help, but they might have some idea how to find the others that had been returned. They'd gone through many hardships through Organization XIII, but they had no love for King Mickey either. It was possible, even probable, that they would want nothing to do with the other realm anymore. If Riku had been given the chance to live in peace, next to Sora, he didn't think that even his loyalty to The King would have made him ignore it.

It wasn't far from his house to Axel's, but it seemed to take an eternity. His foot was never pressed down hard enough on the acceleration, there were too many red lights that got in the way. In the darkness, everything had been slow. It was one of the things that Riku had been loathe to leave behind. Each movement took effort, and time had no meaning as it passed by. The portals would appear every now and then, a firefly in the night, but no one knew how long they remained open.

Now, though, every moment mattered. Riku understood that this fight would be different from the others, somehow. King Mickey was dead; he wouldn't be there to protect him and offer his comfort. The Organization had been forcibly disbanded, they had no carefully compiled files on the enemy. No matter how dangerous it had been before, he knew that this time it would be so very much worse.

It was strange, though. He knew he needed Axel's help, Roxas' too, but when he finally pulled up to the house, he hesitated. It felt like someone was pulling on his arm, keeping him back, but no one was there. He'd relied on his instincts before, but this time they didn't make any sense. Axel wasn't bad, they'd figured out that much already. So what was holding him back?

He wasn't sure, but he knew he'd have to keep an eye on the red-head, if only to satisfy his unease.

"Are you just stalking us, or do you actually have a legitimate reason for being here at..." Axel pulled a watch out of his pocket, checking the time, "six thirty in the morning?"

He shouldn't have been surprised that Axel had managed to sneak up on him so quietly, but he was. His fiery red hair filled up most of the window as he leaned on the car door, a lecherous grin splitting his face. Roxas stood behind him, hands in his pockets, kicking at the ground with his black shoes.

"King Mickey's dead."

Axel looked behind him at Roxas, who raised an eyebrow in some sort of silent communication that they both seemed to understand perfectly.

"Good riddance. That mouse was a meddling fool. He probably stuck his nose somewhere it didn't belong again." Axel shrugged. "He was a constant thorn in The Organization's side. He's lucky we didn't kill him."

"I know you didn't like him, so keep it to yourself. I didn't come here to listen to you insult my friend, Axel. Sora went ahead to the other realm to see what he can find out about what happened, but while he's gone I promised I'd look for anyone willing to help us. Whatever managed to kill King Mickey is strong, there's no way of getting around that. It's going to take more than just me and Sora to take care of it. I'm asking for your help. I know you weren't on our side last time, but we've all been given a second chance. We're being offered the opportunity to fight without relying on the darkness, and I, for one, am going to take it. Are you?"

Axel didn't even wait a moment before answering.

"Fuck no. I'm finally away from all that, there's no way I'm going back. Dying once was enough for me, thanks."

No matter how much Riku wanted to blame Axel for making that choice, he couldn't bring himself to. It was his choice to make, and he couldn't really say that he'd made the wrong one.

"I'll go," Roxas said quietly.

Riku's eyes widened, and from his seat, he watched the blood drain from Axel's face.

"It's not like I really have a choice, is it, Riku? If I don't go, I'll regret it. King Mickey brought me and Axel back from lives that we hated. Axel was dead, and I was a barely-there part of someone else. If anything, I owe him for giving us another chance. I can't refuse."

Nodding, Riku started the car, unlocking the door for Roxas to get in.

"We have to leave now. Time passes a lot more quickly in the other realm, and I'm worried about Sora. I promised him I'd try and find other people who might be willing to help, other people that King Mickey brought back. If you're coming with, get it."

Roxas nodded, and started walking forward only to be stopped by Axel's lanky arm blocking his way.

_'No one would miss me.'_

_'That's not true! I would...'_

He didn't want that to happen again. The last time he'd watched Roxas leave, he'd had to live with losing his best friend and it had pulled him apart. Roxas hadn't even been able to remember his name, let alone what they'd been to each other. He didn't think he could take that again, not now that he finally had Roxas back in his life.

"I don't want you to go."

Roxas smiled, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. Truth be told, he didn't want to go either. But, he hadn't been lying. He felt like he had to help as much as he could, to pay King Mickey back for his gift.

"I'm sorry, Axel, but Mickey brought you back to life. Without him, I would have never seen you again. Even if all I got were these last few days, it was worth it. Don't worry, I'll be back."

He leaned up, pressing a kiss against Axel's mouth, not alarmed in the least bit by the anger in his eyes. Grabbing Axel's hand and linking their fingers together, he smiled before ducking underneath his lover's outstretched arm. With one last glance behind him, he pulled open the car door and they were gone.

* * *

It was with disappointed frowns that the two boys returned to Riku's home after an hour of fruitless searching. It seemed pointless to waste more time looking, neither of them had any idea where to start. Axel had been easy to find; he'd been dropped right into their laps. So had Roxas, for that matter. But they didn't even know if anyone else had survived, let alone where they would have been put if they did.

Riku sighed.

"I guess we'll just have to wait for Sora to come back, see what he's figured out. I thought he might be here already, but since he's not, he shouldn't be that much longer."

An awkward silence hung in the air as Riku reached into the kitchen cabinet to pull out a couple of water glasses. Inside, he was arguing fiercely with himself, having almost the same problem that Sora had upon being alone with his nobody. What did you say to someone who was a part of the person you loved? He couldn't say that he really understood the nuances in a nobody-somebody relationship, and that only complicated things in his mind.

He wasn't attracted to Roxas at all. He could see so much of Sora in Roxas' blue eyes, but he didn't make his pulse beat in his ears, or a blush rise to his face, not like Sora did. So, was he a part of his best friend, or wasn't he? Looking over at the boy sitting in his kitchen, hands tucked behind his head the same way Sora had always done, he thought he found his answer.

Roxas and Sora were cast from the same mold. That much was obvious. If someone blasphemously shaved their hair off, they'd look like the exact same person. They acted the same in a lot of ways, and Riku could swear that the smirk he'd seen on Roxas' face was identical to the one Sora used when feeling proud of himself.

But, even though they were cast from the same mold, they'd been shaped so differently by their experiences. Roxas had grown up surrounded by the darkness, and was a darker person because of it. His smile wasn't any less sincere than Sora's, but it was tinged with deep amounts of bitter knowledge that constantly lurked in the back of his mind. Sora, in his own right, wasn't untouched, but he hadn't been immersed in the darkness like Roxas had. What Sora had lived through was what made Riku love him, just as what Roxas had lived through made Axel love _him_.

Sora was Sora, and, to Riku, that was all that really mattered.

Placing a glass of orange juice next to Roxas, Riku took a seat across from him, propping his shoes on one of the unoccupied chairs.

"I'm sorry we couldn't find the others," Roxas said, taking a small sip from the glass..

"Not your fault." Riku's answer was short and clipped, because he was sure that if he spoke for any appreciable length of time, the question that he desperately wanted to ask would pop out of his mouth, and it wasn't any of his business.

"I wasn't apologizing for myself, I'm just saying that it's a pity we couldn't find them. Having them with us would have been a really big help. I can't say that I was particularly close to any of them, other than Axel, but like he told you, they weren't bad people." He ran a finger around the rim of his glass, propping his head on his other hand tiredly. A huge yawn ripped his face in two for a moment, and Riku realized that he wasn't the only one who had been awake earlier than normal.

"You and Axel were awake when I got to his house. I mean, I didn't even have to get out of the car before you were both there. Why were you guys up so early?"

Roxas gave him a look, the same one that Sora gave him on the rare occasion that he was being unusually dense.

"What do you think we were doing, Riku?"

"Oh." Riku blushed. The answer seemed so obvious. Unfortunately, that brief lack of concentration gave that dreaded question just enough time to slip out of his mouth. "When did you realize you loved Axel?"

It wasn't a bad question, or an embarrassing one, but it was a painful one. How had Axel and Roxas, so alike him and Sora in so many ways, fallen in love when he couldn't even manage to tell Sora that he had feelings for him? It made him feel stupid, really, like there was something completely obvious that he just wasn't getting.

Roxas seemed to know that Riku wasn't just asking the question out of curiosity.

"I met Axel the very first day I was in Organization XIII. Honestly, he scared the hell out of me, but we went out on our first mission that night, and I couldn't have the luxury of being frightened of my partner. Turns out he was a cool guy. He was fun to hang out with, and our morbid senses of humor seemed to feed off each other until we were joking about things that shouldn't have been even remotely funny but seemed hilarious to us. I'd never had someone like him before, a friend that close. When I began having doubts about The Organization, he was the only one I trusted to go to with the information."

Roxas smiled fondly, a far away look in his eyes as he remembered that day. It came to him with such clarity now, and he couldn't imagine how he had forgotten it for a moment.

"He freaked out when I told him, not because I wanted to betray The Organization but because he didn't want me to leave. I thought I understood, after all he was my best friend and I didn't really want to leave him either, but I didn't. He was getting so frustrated, trying to make me understand what was going on through his brain, but I didn't see what was right in front of my face. Finally, he just got fed up with the whole situation and kissed me."

Roxas stopped, taking another drink from his glass of juice and yawning again.

"I slapped him, called him a pervert, and ran back to my room crying, sure that the man I'd thought to be my best friend had been using me all along. It hurt _so_ much. I realized, then, that we'd all been lied to. That being a nobody didn't mean we didn't have hearts. I could tell because every time I thought about him I could feel mine break a little bit more. But _even still_, even feeling so completely betrayed, I didn't forget the way his lips had felt against mine, and that confused me more than anything.

"I guess that's the answer to your question. I realized that I loved him after three days holed up in my room, punching the wall approximately every fifteen minutes, trying to decide if I couldn't bear to see him anymore or if I couldn't bear not to."

It...wasn't the response he'd been expecting, surely, but it made a strange type of sense. Axel and Roxas were odd people, it seemed right for their relationship to have started out in an odd way.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, and he and Roxas shared a confused look. It was still rather early in the morning, too early for any casual visitors.

Riku stood up, placing his glass in the sink on his way over to the front door. Opening it up, he raised an eyebrow at the crowd of people on his doorstep.

"Don't bother asking me where I found these losers," Axel said, pushing his way inside. Looking past him, Riku was met with Demyx's sheepish smile and a glare from Zexion's one exposed eye.

_'Well,'_ he thought, _'at least they're not trying to kill me this time.'_

He ushered them into the house, intent on getting some more orange juice.


	6. Too Late

* * *

Sora opened his eyes slowly, forcibly ignoring the pounding headache between his eyes. He felt the same way he had after trying, and failing, to beat Demyx in Hollow Bastion. Like someone had given him forty whacks with a struggle bat. His legs were lead and his arms were no better, and something hard was digging into his ankles and wrists. Unfortunately, opening his eyes showed him nothing; wherever he'd gotten injured was completely dark.

The first thought that entered his mind, however briefly, was that he'd finally succumbed to the darkness. That, after all of his years fighting for the light, he'd been pulled under. He wasn't stupid; he knew the darkness had something to offer him. Not swaddling, but an endless blanket of calm. Never suffocating, always caressing. Sora had always imagined it to be a lot like dying, really. Constantly dying, without any pain. To someone like him, who had always been fighting for a cause that wouldn't really matter in the long run, it seemed like a relief.

The thought went away just as quickly as it had come, however. He had never imagined that pain might accompany the darkness, not to mention that Riku was the biggest algophobe he'd ever met.

Well, he thought, if this isn't _the_ darkness, then what darkness is it?

His mouth felt like sandpaper, and running his tongue over his lips caused them to crack open and fill his mouth with the tang of blood. His back was pressed against a bumpy, jagged wall, and his warmth had done little to chase away the cold. For everything that he knew and understood, that he was hungry and thirsty, cold and pained, there was something else that he didn't know. Who had done this to him? Why had they brought him here? Where _was_ here?

He'd finally managed to identify the weights on his wrists and ankles as shackles, and, upon further investigation, had found himself firmly bound to the wall.

"Chip? Dale?" he whispered to the silence around him, not really expecting a response. Still, when one didn't come, it hadn't really made him feel very vindicated. "This sucks, guys, you know?"

A light, breezy laughter infiltrated the room at his words, and it sent a chill up his spine. It sounded feminine, but he couldn't figure out anything else. What really bothered him, though, was that it also sounded vaguely familiar.

"You think yourself alone, keyblade master?" The voice should have been reassuring, but was far from it. Like a voice next to his bed in the middle of the night, it shouldn't have been there, and its sweetness made it unbearable. "You, of all people, should know that we are never truly alone."

"I don't know what you're talking about.

"Don't you?" To him, it seemed as if she were humoring a stubborn child.

"No, I don't. Listen, I don't know who you are, or why I'm here, or anything, but I'm not going to just sit here and take it. I'm not sure what you think you know about me, but I think your sources were misinformed."

The voice came back, as strong as ever, as if the woman was right next to him, speaking into his ear, laughing at some non-existent joke.

"You are wrong, keyblade master. Oh, so wrong." He felt a sticky substance begin covering his left hand, and his skin immediately felt like it was on fire, blistering and rippling under the intense heat. He hadn't been conscious for more than a few minutes, but this time, when he passed out, it would be a long time before he woke again.

* * *

The sound of a gummi portal opening brought Riku rushing towards the front door, his guests and juice momentarily forgotten. However, at the sight of Chip and Dale, dirty and panting, he slowed, worry beginning to paint his features.

"Where's Sora?" he asked. Looking at the gummi ship for the first time, he noticed that it had obviously seen better days. The side paneling was scratched and dented, and the paint was chipped off in places. It seemed that one of the landing wheels had been damaged, so the whole ship tilted to the left. A thin sliver of trepidation lodged itself into Riku's spine, aching with a ferocity that no physical pain could match.

Chip and Dale looked at each other, exchanging an odd glance that they both seemed to understand perfectly.

"We don't know. There's a chamber beneath King Mickey's throne, and Sora thought there might be some sort of clue there. But, when we finally got to the room...well...I guess you could say we were attacked, but I've never seen anything like it before. We would have stayed, tried to help, after all we were the ones who wanted him to come with us in the first place, but what would we have done? We're half a foot tall, and we don't even have opposable thumbs..."

Chip continued, when Dale's voice guiltily trailed off.

"It was odd. Everything got really cold, and this dark stuff started oozing out of the ceiling. It felt so sinister. It must have been alive somehow, because it reached out and grabbed Sora's ankle, making him lose his balance. He grimaced, like he was in pain, but he didn't shout out or anything like that. He tried to brush the stuff off, but that only got it on his hands, and it started climbing up his wrists. It was horrible, and we couldn't hope to do anything. If we'd touched it, the same thing would have happened to us. He told us to get help, so we ran. I feel sick just thinking about it, but there wasn't anything else we could do."

He wrung his paws together, looking nervous. And with good reason. Riku looked like he was about to whip out a semi-automatic and start reaping some serious vengeance.

"Fuck..." he whispered, running a hand through his hair. Sora was out there somewhere, either completely alone or in the hands of the enemy, and he'd been here, doing absolutely nothing. In the end, Axel was the only one who'd managed to make use of Sora's sacrifice.

"We have to go after him, right? There's nothing else we can do," said Roxas, as he gently grabbed Axel's arm, pulling him out of the house. Demyx and Zexion followed suit, leaving Riku behind to shut the door. His hands shook as he fumbled with the lock, his mind almost shutting down from the plethora of macabre images streaming through his mind like water. He knew Sora could take care of himself. He _knew_ that. But this was his best friend that was in danger, the one person who he'd happily lay down his life for. It was impossible for him not to worry.

Climbing aboard the gummi ship filled him with a nervous sense of anticipation. He didn't know what he'd find when he looked for Sora, but he knew that castle inside and out. If his friend was anywhere inside its walls, he would find him. And, if he wasn't, he'd find out how he'd gotten away.

"Alright, everyone, buckle in. The ride in is probably going to be really nasty. Our ship isn't in the best shape, and the normal stabilizers malfunctioned on the trip here, so we're going to have to rely on the backup ones which weren't really built with inter-dimensional travel in mind." Chip and Dale hurried around the cockpit, pulling levers and checking gages for any last minute adjustments. They were nervous going back—they didn't know what they would find—but they knew there were no other options. The owed it to their King; they owed it to their country.

"Alright, is everyone ready?" Five sets of eyes were trained on the two pilots, nodding their acquiescence. The engine roared to life as the ship gained flight, visibly shaking back and forth from the strain.

"Hmm...well, guys, I don't know about you, but I feel like we're all about to die. Again." Demyx smirked, folding his hands behind his head. "Although, I really don't think it'll be quite as painful as last time. I'm not a big fan of getting sliced to pieces, not gonna lie."

"And you thing that burning to death in an airship accident is somehow preferable?" asked Zexion, raising an amused eyebrow.

"Well, it's never happened to me, so I can't be entirely sure, but I think I'll go with a tentative 'yes'." He nodded resolutely, grinning widely. "Of course, any demise, no matter how horrific, is worth being able to spend my final moments with my two favorite nobodies!" Wrapping his arms around Axel's neck and Zexion's shoulders, he sighed dramatically.

"Don't make me get out the gag, Dem, you know Roxas and I aren't into that kind of thing." Axel ruffled Roxas' hair while his boyfriend blushed to the roots of his hair, smacking the redhead on his arm.

"Don't say things like that, you pervert. Besides, I don't think now is really the appropriate time for this sort of thing. I know that screwing around is what helps you guys deal with things, but you might what to try a different tactic for the time being."

The cockpit quieted at that, and the ship began to shake violently, causing rather worried expressions to pop up on the faces of its occupants.

"Don't worry guys, those are just the dimensional shields kicking in. We're about to enter the empty space between the realms; without those shields, all the research available on the subject says that our ship would be ripped apart like paper from the negative gravitational push," Chip said, his eyes still focused on the sky ahead of them.

"Lovely."

"As long as none of you open the windows, we should be fine," Dale chuckled lightly, pushing one of the levers forwards and locking it in place. As he turned back around, the smile fell quickly from his face as he remembered exactly what it was that they were heading towards. He couldn't manage to forget what Sora's face had looked like, so pained yet determined to ignore that pain. He wasn't stupid, he knew what it was that the keyblade master had been doing for King Mickey, but seeing that had just reaffirmed his convictions that Sora should have remained in his own realm, away from all that.

It had been Chip's idea to bring them all back, and they'd only fallen back on it because there had been absolutely no other option. Everything that they'd ever known had been ripped out from under their feet, and they weren't meant to deal with that. They were just pilots, chauffeurs to the people who needed them, never meant to be fighters. What else could they have possibly done?

He sighed. Regrets, King Mickey had always said, were the most useless thoughts one could have.

"How long with it take for us to get to the castle?" Riku asked, his arms folded across his chest and his brow wrinkled in aggravation.

"This is the fastest full-sized ship that we had in the hangar. It should only be an hour or so now that we're on this side of the dimension gap.

"Do you have any idea," Riku began, his tone deceptively calm, "what can happen in an hour?"

"Dude, cool off, alright?" Axel came up behind him, nudging his arm with his elbow. "They're doing the best they can. In all honesty, if something was going to happen to Sora, it probably already has. Being an ass to the people who want to help you isn't going to save him any faster."

"Don't pretend for a _second_ that you understand what's going through my mind right now," Riku growled, throwing the redhead's arm away with a forcefulness that surprised both of them.

"Jesus Christ, Riku! What are you, twelve years old? The only thing that kind of shit is good for is making you feel sorry for yourself. It's not like you're the only person that's ever been worried about someone they love. You're not the only one that's ever blamed themselves for something they had no control over. Get a grip, man! I know that being a rational human being might be too much for you to handle right now, but let's give it a try, hm?"

Riku stared after him as he sat back down in the chair next to Roxas', linking their fingers together and looking out the window. He was right, _damn it_, he was right. He swallowed, sitting down and strapping himself in. Pressing his forehead with his hands, he tried to rein in his turbulent anger. It was as if he had no faith in Sora's ability to protect himself when, in reality, he was probably stronger than Riku would ever be.

Roxas leaned over, resting his hand briefly on Riku's shoulder.

"It'll be alright, Riku. You have to trust that Sora can take care of himself until we get there."

At Roxas' familiar smile, something darted across Riku's consciousness, a brief moment of recognition, a small instance of remembrance that flooded his senses with foreign grief.

"_You accept darkness, yet choose to live in the light. So why is it that you loathe us who teeter on the edge of nothing? We who were turned away by both light and dark - never given a choice?" Xemnas turned, spreading his arms wide, a knowing smile on his face._

"_That's simple. It's because you mess up our worlds."_

"_That may be... however, what other choice might we have had?" He sounded lucid, almost reasonable"_

"_Just give it a rest!" Sora spat, "You're Nobodies! You don't even exist!"_

He pressed his eyelids together, coming out of the memory with a sense of vicious clarity. They were all sitting in front of him, beside him, behind him, these people that weren't really people at all. Zexion had his eyes closed, a small smirk gracing his features, and Demyx was gently humming to himself, tapping his fingers on the arm of his chair to an imaginary beat. Axel and Roxas were still holding hands, while occasionally one would look at the other and smile, as if, despite it being horribly cheesy, they were deliriously happy just to be able to touch one another again.

He and Sora had allowed their hate to fester for these people for so long, yet for some reason the former Organization members had agreed to help them. As he sat there, dazed from remembering, he couldn't help but wonder if, perhaps, these people were more human than either he or Sora had ever been.

* * *

"Wake up, wake up, little keybearer...I do believe it's time to play."

Sora swam through his consciousness gradually, enjoying the blissful peace that the darkness afforded him. If he put his mind to it, he could forget that the shackles were digging rather painfully into his wrists, and he could put aside his horrible thirst. He could ignore his pounding headache and his desire to spit on someone, in favor of being completely unaware. The voice was like a knife, piercing through his stupor, pulling his back into the reality that he'd been so studiously disregarding.

"You didn't think I'd let you sleep forever, did you?"

"That _is_ what I was hoping, yeah.

A light chuckle ran through the room, seeming to bounce off the walls all around him. It sent more shivers down his back, something which was fast becoming somewhat of a routine when his captor was in the room.

"Oh Sora, you _do_ amuse me. However, your little friends are going to find us soon, so we can't afford to waste time like this. Do you have anything you'd like to ask me before we get started?"

Sora imagined that her tone was one a doctor might use on a patient who was about to get their brain surgically replaced with a houseplant. He couldn't remember a single other time in his life when he'd felt so incredibly violated.

"Did you kill King Mickey?" There was a blindfold over his eyes, so he couldn't see the room, but straining to hear where the voice was coming from was proving to be completely useless. Somehow, like the laugh, the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Oh, you disappoint me. That's the best you can come up with? And Xemnas told me you were at least a little intelligent. Fine. No, I didn't kill King Mickey. I tend to have my pet do the dirty work for me. I think you've met her, she did bring you here, if you remember."

Sora's brain immediately went into overdrive. His captor had, unwittingly, given him a clue to consider once she was gone. That is, if he survived until then. He didn't know how long someone could live with a houseplant instead of a brain.

"Your 'pet' needs to learn some manners when it comes to inviting guests into a home. Haven't you taught her that it's not polite to give your guests blisters?"

A slow finger trailed down his cheek in a morbid imitation of a caress, and Sora pushed down his revulsion to try to glean more information on his captor. Subconsciously, he supposed that expected her to be old and wrinkled, like a used person who had become cynical and sadistic from that abuse. But, her skin was soft and smooth, and her nails were neatly kept as they scratched gently across his face

"She can't help it. It's her nature to be cruel. She is, after all, nothing but pure darkness. She burns, she freezes, she calms and comforts. She is whatever will lure her prey to her most quickly. But, I'm sure you already knew that. Since your first one was so awful, I suppose I'll allow you one more question, if you make it quick."

The hand was back, smoothing his dirty hair away from his face.

"You said that...my friends are coming to find us. How do you know?"

She patted his cheek in what might have passed as a fond way, had the situation been different.

"I can't tell you that, Sora, it would ruin the game! And we're having so _much_ fun. Too bad, though, it wasn't a bad question. I'll have to watch what I say around you if you're paying such careful attention. We wouldn't want this to be over before it's even started, would we?"

He could hear footsteps echo around the room, soft taps like fabric on wooden floors. His captor began talking quietly, as if she'd forgotten that she wasn't alone. Words came to him, disjointed phrases that didn't register as anything close to sane.

"_How very lucky...no, no, I don't think that's right...oh, that IS interesting...we'll see what we can do, shall we?"_

The footsteps stopped.

"Let's take a look, hm keyblade master?" She snapped her fingers, and the air in the room became suddenly stifling. He clenched his fists as they got hotter and hotter, and he had to forcibly hold back a gasp as the keyblade appeared in his palm. It hadn't felt like it was supposed to feel. Usually, the keyblade felt like coming home, or seeing a friend that he hadn't seen in a long, long time. It was a completion of himself, brought forth because he had a need for it to protect him.

But this fucking _hurt_! It felt horribly wrong. However, before he even had a chance to get the least bit used to the situation, the Kingdom Key was plucked right out of his hand. If the pain had been an inconvenience, losing the key was a soul-deep violation.

"You know, this really should be completely useless. It's too blunt to do any piercing damage. What, do you bludgeon your foes to death?" A loud ringing echoed throughout the room, and she gasped dramatically.

"Oh, silly me. I really should learn how to hold onto things better. Well, it's not like you'll need this anymore anyway, now that you're here with me. Let's just get rid of this, shall we?"

She snapped her fingers again, and the pain that had been only a small trickle became a torrent of agony that rendered him completely bereft of the last thing that he'd thought he could always count on.

Even though he couldn't see, he knew it with utter certainty.

The Keyblade was gone, and he was totally fucked.


	7. The Bite of Reality

_The bark of the paopu tree felt soft beneath his fingers, and the leaves brushed gently against his back. Pushing his hair off his forehead, he sighed. An ocean breeze soared past him, wrapping him with warm caresses, like a blanket, carrying with it the salty smell of the water and the dry air that promised rain the following day. The water was calm, showing off its resplendence as it sparkled in the mid-afternoon sun._

_Sora smiled. Living here was like a dream, and he never wanted to wake up._

"_Riku, I wish...we could stay like this forever, you know? It's perfect. We're so lucky..."_

_He thought he saw a small smile tug at Riku's lips, as he stood there, so stoically crossing his arms. He could remember a time when Riku would have smiled and laughed, just like him. It seemed that those days were coming to an end, but that was alright. Sora knew that the Riku he loved was still around; it just took a bit of prodding to make him surface._

"_Where do you think we are, Sora?" Riku asked with a raised eyebrow._

"_Huh?"_

_His best friend looked out on the ocean, steeping the moment in a quiet that had become familiar in the past few years._

"_You never did get it, did you? Didn't they tell you? All of this," he opened his arms, turning to take in everything around them, "has always been a complete lie. Destiny Islands...what a crock. Did you really think either of us __was__ ever going to find our destinies here?"_

"_Riku, you're not really making any sense."_

_He smiled, a fake smile that left Sora feeling bereft and, somehow, terribly lonely._

"_I never could find the courage to tell you. There were so many times that I almost did, when I was just a second from letting it slip out of my mouth, but I never could. You would never hesitate to tell me, if the situation had been reversed, and I think that's why I never did it. You had her now, you didn't need me anymore."_

_The words caused a sharp pain in Sora's chest, though he wasn't quite sure why. Riku had always been his best friend—always would be, as far as he was concerned—and no one could take that place. _

"_I'll always need you..." he trailed off as Riku reached a hand out to him, offering him something that had a significance he couldn't even begin to understand. He didn't—couldn't—accept the offer. He didn't know what his friend was asking of him._

"_It's funny, Sora," Riku said as he pulled his hand away again, "That even after all this, I still..."_

_He stopped, looking down at his hand with an unconcerned expression on his face._

"_Huh, that's odd, my hand's cold." Sora looked down too, eyes widening at the black substance that had cunningly made its way onto Riku's wrist._

"_Oh my God, Riku, you have to get it off! It's the darkness, it's not healthy!" he tried to pull it from Riku's skin, wrapping his fingers around it, tangling them in nothing._

"_Um, Sora? I don't think it's going to matter all that much"_

"_Wha-" Riku smiled at him, ruffling his brown hair with his free hand, before holding it between them. It had become translucent, and what seemed like little bits of light were peeling off of it in sections of skin._

"_Look, Sora, I'm finally disappearing..."_

_And with another gust of the beautiful ocean breeze, Riku was gone._

* * *

Sora woke up instantly, his heart beating so rapidly that he thought it might jump completely out of his chest. That had been, undeniably, one of the most terrifying dreams that he could ever remember having. The image that lingered in his mind, along with the horrible fright of seeing Riku just...disappear, was filling his stomach with nausea. It had seemed so real, and that had been the most unsettling part about it.

He could remember that tree with such clarity. It had been in their secret cove—bent over like the force of a thousand winds had taken away its integrity—and had been the perfect height for sitting and watching the sunset. How many times had he and Riku sat there together, talking about whatever came to mind? The most serious conversations they'd ever had together had taken place by that very tree.

To be completely truthful, it had been where he'd told his friend that he was going to ask Kairi to be his girlfriend, and where they'd both gotten utterly drunk to celebrate their captaincies on the last day of finals, junior year.

It was a special place.

_So why did my subconscious decide to ruin it like that?_ Sora couldn't help but wonder.

As his mental lethargy began to lift, and the discontent left over from the dream was filed away in the back of his mind, the discomfort in his shoulders brought him back to reality. It seemed like he'd learned to rely on Donald and his cures a lot more than he'd thought. His pain tolerance could get him through a battle, but apparently it wasn't that effective on a long term scale.

When was the last time he'd had a drink of water? There was no way of knowing for sure. The last time he'd been this thirsty had been when Aladdin had dared him and Goofy to spend a day in the desert and they'd forgotten to bring water. He tried to swallow around the cotton in his throat, but it just made him all the more aware that there wasn't anything to wet his parched mouth.

"If you're going to kill me, at least get it over with! I can't imagine that dying from dehydration is very pleasant, you know?" he yelled to the empty room, instantly regretting it as the words tore through his throat. Of course, no one answered. He slumped against the wall, uncaring that the cold was digging into his back like a knife, and that his lungs felt wet and tight. He closed his eyes against the darkness, feeling it creep in on him again like it had so many times before when he'd almost lost hope.

"I'm so sorry, Riku, for everything. I never wanted any of this to happen. Not to me, not to you...we had so much going for us, and then everything just got so screwed up. I'm losing my mind here, you know? Slowly, maybe, but I definitely feel like I'm going crazy. It's like I'll wake up any moment in my soft, warm bed, and realize that I'm late for school again. I'll run out the door, and you'll be there, waiting for me with that pissed off look on your face, but I'd know you're secretly happy to see me. I'd give anything for that, Riku, you have no idea. I'd be so happy if everything could just be _normal_ again."

He rested his head on the cool stone behind him, sighing. If only it were as simple as wishing for things to change.

"_Giving up already, Sora? I thought you were stronger than that."_

_Riku..._

A sudden burst of realization pulsed through his mind, and he sat up again. Riku was coming for him, hopefully with reinforcements. He hadn't stood a chance against the concentrated darkness that had captured, and, if his dream was any indication, Riku wouldn't either. His best friend, and whoever he'd managed to track down, would get captured just like he had. Or worse, he could be killed.

There was no way he was letting that happen.

"I'm the fucking Keyblade Master! I'm not going to just sit here and lick my wounds until she comes back to give me more. Yeah, alright! Now, first things first..." he trailed off, closing his eyes. "_The key to making magic work,"_ Merlin had said, _"isn't being strong, though some would swear otherwise. The spells work with your body, and finding that equilibrium is much more efficient than just relying on raw power. Because of this, no matter how incapacitated you are, you should technically be able to find enough material inside yourself to produce results. They may not be spectacular, but even the smallest spell can work wonders if procured at the appropriate moment."_

He turned his gaze inward, looking for the well of power that was his magic. He was weak, he was tired and hungry, but he pushed all that aside. There was a place in his heart where physical discomfort made no impact on his thoughts—he'd retreated there during every battle—and he strove to find it again, hoping that it hadn't been lost from disuse.

He knew he had to be careful, though. He knew what he risked by doing magic when he was so weak.

"_Think of it like...a candle. To make a candle glow, you need wax, a wick, and, of course, the flame to light it. The wax is your being, the wick is your innate magic, and the light is your will to create the spell. When the wick is gone, the wax will stop burning; if you have no more innate magic, you cannot perform. However, the wick will continue burning until the wax is completely evaporated. If you attempt to use your innate magic when you do not have enough physical and mental strength to sustain it, the spell will use what little you have and then take directly from your life force. Depending on how much you overestimate your capacity, that final spell may even be enough to kill you. You have my warning. Whether you accept it or not is your choice, in the end."_

Taking a deep breath, he began pulling at the magic gently, mentally weaving it into the familiar pattern of the aero spell. The first thing he wanted to do was get his blindfold off, so he could finally get a look at his surroundings, and the right amount of wind concentrated in the right area should be enough to knock it off.

He could feel the magic begin to flow through him, ruffling his hair like happy fingers, and he felt it tug at his blindfold, the bit of cloth fluttering back and forth. It was a drain on his system, but finally the blindfold peeled away, and he could finally, _finally_, see something other than utter and inescapable darkness.

If he'd been expecting to see some sort of automatic, magic-activated escape lever, he was to be sadly disappointed. While it may not have been the quintessential 'dungeon cell', it definitely had the look of a disused basement. The walls were cement, just like the dirty floor, and there were several dark, wooden racks placed in neat rows along the perimeter.

A sudden wave of dizziness hit him, and, for a brief moment, he was afraid that he'd overdone it, that even that brief spell had been enough to completely drain him, but the feeling passed on as quickly as it had come. Pushing it to the back of his mind, he promised that he'd think about it later. Right then, there were other things that needed his attention.

"Right, then. How am I going to get out of here?" He looked down at his ankles, trying to figure out a way to break the bonds holding his feet neatly in place.

"Oh no, you're not going anywhere. Like I said before, it would ruin the game."

Sora's head whipped around, his eyes widening as he took in the figure leaning against the doorframe.

"You!" If he hadn't seen her with his own eyes, he never would have believed it. He began frantically pulling at the magic inside of him again, desperately trying to pool together enough for one more attack.

"I have to admit, I'm rather impressed that you managed to get as far along as you did. I didn't think you capable of it." She brought her hand up to her face, as if nonchalantly examining her nails.

"After everything you did, you have the nerve to capture me, to keep me here. Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now." He balled his hands into fists, feeling the energy gently leak from his skin.

"I don't need a reason, I should think. You are, after all, the one at my mercy. Maybe I should be the one asking _you_ that question, hm?"

"You deserve this, and I hope it hurts." He pushed the spell outwards, the thunder crackling around them like an electrically charged blanket. When it hit her, laugher came from her mouth, the very same laughter that had sent many a chill through his bones.

"You really think that's going to work on me? Huh. You really are an idiot. Next time, try and use your brain."

Sora knew that he'd pushed himself too hard, and he could feel himself losing his grip on reality, but that didn't stop him from realizing that his last spell had, in fact, been an incredibly stupid one to use.

* * *

"Alright, we'll be coming up on Disney Castle in a few minutes. I don't know exactly what you guys plan on doing, but I think Chip and I should stay on the ship. We can keep everything ready in case something happens and we gotta split. Are you alright with that, Chip?"

Chip nodded, smiling.

"I can't say how bad it'll be in there, but you guys should definitely stay on your toes. It's probably been close to a week since Sora got captured They may still be there, or they may not. Sora took care of King Mickey before he went into the basement, and we believe him to be the only obvious casualty so far, but there's no way of knowing for sure."

The castle had come into view, and they angled downward towards the opening gate of the gummi hangar. They weren't worried about the large ship fitting into the small space—Chip and Dale were the best gummi pilots out there, excepting, of course, Cid Highwind—but that moment when the runners latched onto the ship to pull it into the docks was always mildly jarring

Even just looking out the windows, they immediately knew that something was wrong. Dripping down the walls was a strange black substance. It leaked from the ceiling in thin rivulets, pooling on the floor in opaque puddles.

"Oh man, it's everywhere! Is this what got Sora?" At the nod the pilots gave him, Roxas sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Well, I don't suppose we have much of a choice. We're just going to have to avoid it. We have to have a chance to look around, right?"

He stood up, pulling Axel to his feet with him. Demyx and Zexion rose as well, standing over by the door.

"As much as it pains me to say this, we should probably separate into groups. I suggest we reconvene here, in one hour, to discuss what our next actions should be." Those were the first words that Zexion had spoken in a good half-hour, and they were enough to gain a raised eyebrow from almost everyone in the group.

"Groups, huh?" Demyx tapped his finger against his chin, folding his arms. "And what would you suggest those groups be?"

"Demyx, you would be with Axel, Riku would be with myself, and Roxas would be alone."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. Why is Roxas the one going by himself?" Axel turned his irritated gaze towards Zexion, but Riku cut him off, speaking in his stead.

"It makes sense. They obviously captured Sora for a particular reason, likely because he wields the Keyblade, because they just let Chip and Dale go. I find it unlikely that they managed to escape notice entirely. Roxas, as Sora's nobody, also has the power to hold the Keyblade. They will either take him as well, in which case there will likely be nothing we can do to stop it, or they will ignore him. Assigning a partner to Roxas would be pointless. The rest of us would benefit from the support."

"No." Axel grabbed Roxas' hand again, pulling him close to his side. "I'm going with him."

Roxas snorted, patting Axel on the shoulder but pulling his hand out of his grip.

"Nope. You're going with Demyx. I agree with Zexion and Riku. If I'm going to get caught anyway, there's no reason for you to get mixed up in it too." He walked over to Chip and Dale, who were currently perched on top of the captain's chair, and whispered something to them. Their expressions were suddenly overcome with seriousness, and they both nodded, saluting Roxas firmly.

Demyx clapped his hands together, loudly enough that it got everyone's attention, but not so loud that it bothered them, and placed his hand on the door.

"Right. Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to head out." The door opened slowly behind him, and he swung his arm around Zexion's neck, leading him outside while his friend's face harbored a rather pained expression.

The remaining three boys looked at each other with raised eyebrows, but Demyx's horrified shout brought them all running to the doorway, wondering how they could possibly have managed to get into trouble in the few seconds they'd been gone.

"Oh man, that is _rank_!" Demyx was holding one hand over his nose, fanning the other in front of his face. As they entered the hangar, they immediately understood what he was talking about. The smell that assaulted them was so strong that it immediately tripped their gag reflexes. It was a smell like nothing they'd ever experienced, and none of them could really find a way to describe it. It was putrid.

"Awful. I don't know how long I'll be able to take this. Let's head upstairs; everything will have had more time to air out and hopefully it'll smell better." Axel nodded towards the staircase, and the group hastily made a retreat, the gummi ship door closing behind them to block out the odor.

As they emerged into the sunny courtyard, they were immediately struck by the same thing that had gotten to Sora.

"I didn't picture Mickey's castle being quite this gloomy," Demyx commented, folding his arms behind his head as he walked around, kicking at the dull gray grass.

"I would assume that it wasn't always like this. Riku, you've been here before, have you not?" Zexion brushed his hair out of his eyes, turning his gaze towards Riku.

"Not in any normal setting, no. I came here once, with Mickey, but we didn't really have time for me to go off sightseeing. We were in the hidden chamber beneath his throne, the same one that, I'm assuming, Sora was in when he was taken. If I wasn't pretty sure that it's completely covered in this black thing, I would suggest we head down there first, but, as it is..." he shrugged, trailing off. Riku knew that the chamber had seen enough dark portals during King Mickey's reign that it was likely to have become a permanently tainted area, or an area that was much more susceptible to dark infiltration.

"Well, I'm gonna get started," Roxas said, running his fingers through Axel's hair for a moment. "I don't really think I have any tangible connection to Sora anymore, so I doubt I'll be able to find him on instinct, but we'll see. Maybe being in this realm again will trigger something."

"Alright then. I guess this means me and Axel will head out too," Demyx said, linking his arm through Axel's. "Now, Mr. Cloaked Schemer, I don't want to hear anything about you dying. We didn't get resurrected just for you to kick it again." With a nod from Zexion, he smiled, dragging Axel with him into one of the many hallways that branched off from the main courtyard, carefully avoiding the collected puddles of darkness. Roxas chose a hallway as well, leaving Zexion and Riku alone in the courtyard.

Riku sighed. It was time to get some thing straight.

"Listen, not to be an ass or anything, but I can't help wondering why you're still alive. Demyx and Axel I can understand. Roxas, too. They were just stuck in something they didn't want to be a part of. But you? You were just a jerk, no matter how you slice it." He folded his arms across his chest, waiting for Zexion's answer.

"Despite the fact that no human being should ever be forced to justify his own existence, I will humor you. I was neither the most, nor least cruel member of the Organization. I cared little for the life I lead, and I doubt that is likely to change in the near future, but being dead was very unpleasant. I don't know if it was because I was a nobody, thus I hadn't earned the right to a pleasant afterlife, or if death is just disagreeable in general, but King Mickey offered me a chance to live again, and I took it."

He began walking away, gesturing for Riku to follow him, clearly displeased with the wasted time.

"I can't say whether he believed that I was never truly evil, or whether he hoped that I might change my ways were I given another chance, but he must have thought I had potential. '_Number VI, Zexion_' he said, and those were the first words I'd heard in what seemed like an eternity. _'I'm offering you another chance at life. Will you take it?'_ I agreed, and now I'm here. Do I deserve to be? Probably not. But, like I said, I don't feel that I need to justify it to you. Now, I think it likely that Roxas will, against our better judgment, go down to the basement. Would you like to follow him there, or try our hand somewhere else?"

Riku sent him an appraising look, wondering what had incited King Mickey into allowing him a second chance. There was probably some aspect of the situation that he didn't understand, and he trusted the late king. Mentally shrugging it off, he thought about Zexion's parting question.

"I think you're probably right about Roxas, if he's anything like Sora. Going on what I heard from King Mickey, that room is really the hot-spot for dark activity in the castle. If we're going to find any clues at all, they'll most likely be there. I'd like to look around for awhile though, just to be sure."

With that being said, he began to lead Zexion on a thorough investigation of the castle, looking for any signs, whatsoever, of his best friend.

_'Don't worry, Sora. We'll find you.'_

* * *

Roxas waited until Riku and Zexion had passed by before quietly pushing open the audience chamber doors, closing them behind him. The first thing he noticed was that this room appeared to be the origin of the horrible smell, and his eyes instantly began to water from it.

"Demyx was right, this _is_ rank." He pushed his nausea down, and walked towards the chair in the middle of the room, careful to avoid the black puddles that seemed to be almost everywhere. The last people who had used the once-hidden passage, most likely Chip and Dale, had neglected to close it again, leaving it completely open for Roxas to use. It looked dark and ominous, a gaping black hole in the pristine white floor. He thought it might a product of his overactive imagination, but he thought he could feel a faint breeze coming through the opening, almost beckoning him in. Not that he needed the persuasion.

From the very first stair, he knew he hadn't imagined the evil feeling coming from the basement. It was like a tangible boundary. The foot that he'd placed below the floor was immediately enveloped in a cold unlike anything he'd ever felt. He didn't think it was a physical cold, more like a mental sensation so intense that he felt it in his flesh, but he decided to continue anyway. If Sora was down there, even if he wasn't but there was some clue as to where he _was_, he had to do it. In his mind, as when Riku had approached them about the death of King Mickey, he felt that he had no real choice.

* * *

Axel shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, still getting used to wearing them after so long stuffed inside an Organization XIII cloak. Truth be told, he wasn't really looking for anything. Unless Sora jumped in front of him waving his underwear, he was likely to miss him anyway. Neither he nor Demyx were known as being particularly observant. For the most part, he was just worried about Roxas. It wasn't as if his boyfriend was incapable of taking care of himself in a normal situation, but this was something entirely different.

Dammit, he'd just gotten back together with him!

"Calm down, Axel. Roxas knows what he's doing. Even if he does get caught, which, I hate to say, seems pretty damn likely at this point, he won't go down without a fight. He's not an invalid. Just because he's shorter than us doesn't mean he's any less capable."

Looking over at Demyx, Axel was once again reminded why he'd enjoyed his company back during his time with the Organization. Maybe 'Number IX' had come across as cowardly and naïve, but eventually they'd gotten to know each other. The number had become a name, and he'd realized that there was more to his friend than met the eye. What he'd thought had been naivety had really been a simple good nature, and a desire to make the people around him, that were filled with so much sadness, happy, in any way he could.

"Thanks Demyx, but I just can't help it. I don't want something to happen to him again. I'm pretty sure that we won't be getting another shot if we blow this one. Especially not with Mickey dead."

Demyx shrugged, continuing to walk beside his friend, happy, as he'd always been, just to have another moment that he could look forward to. A sudden thought entered his mind, and he smiled mischievously at Axel.

"I know you and Roxas were brought back, and me and Zexion, of course, but do you think anyone else was? I mean, I doubt there's any way we can know for sure, but it would be cool. I know Marluxia had some anger management issues, but I liked him anyway. Vexen kind of creeped me out a bit, and I always thought there was something a little off about the way Xigbar acted, so even though I wouldn't begrudge them another chance, I wouldn't really want to be around them. But I loved playing cards with Luxord, even though I always lost unless he was drunk."

He closed his eyes, obviously thinking of something that he remembered fondly, because he let out a snort of laugher, elbowing Axel softly in the side.

"I don't know. I can understand why Mickey would bring you back, and Roxas, but I can't think of what his other criteria might have been. Unless, by some miracle, we run into them eventually, I don't think we'll ever know for sure. It's a pity about Luxord, though...I never could manage to beat him, even _when_ he was drunk. I think the only one who managed it with him sober was Sora. And I don't suppose that really counts."

"No, I don't think it does. To be honest, I never did like that punk. He was an ass," Demyx said, a small pout forming on his features.

"He wasn't so bad, once you got to know him. I think he was just like us, really, thrown into a situation that he didn't like and had no control over. It's enough to make anyone a bit of an ass, really."

Demyx nodded a hesitant agreement, and they continued down the hall until it ended, walking around an empty castle until the clock told them an hour had gone by.

After waiting with Zexion and Riku for exactly fifteen minutes, it became clear that Roxas wasn't going to be joining them.


	8. Like Heroes

"Where's Roxas?" Chip pressed the button, opening the door to the outside world as the group made their way through the hangar.

"He was taken, as we suspected he would be." Brushing his hair behind his ear, Zexion was the second to arrive. Axel, with his arms crossed and murder written on his face, had been eager to leave the group behind. Despite having come on this trip with six allies, all but Roxas had fallen into the category of his mind that pertained to people he wouldn't mind killing.

Chip and Dale exchanged a glance, and only a small twitch of their whiskers showed their nervousness. Sure, they'd promised Roxas, but…it was a promise they were loath to keep.

"_If I get captured, which is entirely likely, I want you to leave. There's no reason for everyone else to stay here when Sora is probably already dead and I'm heading towards the same fate. I love Axel. I'm counting on you guys to save him, alright?"_

Dale shivered, the memory of Roxas' words burning between his eyes. Could they really leave him and Sora behind, abandoning them? They had made an oath, hadn't they? With King Mickey's seal adorning the bottom? An oath to protect and serve…

But, who were they supposed to protect?

Chip looked over, swallowing nervously but nodding slightly, regardless. Roxas had been looking out for the good of the team, and they would follow his judgment. Even if it meant leaving him to die.

"It's a good thing you came back. We have to figure out what our next course of action should be, right?"

Riku narrowed his eyes, looking directly into Chip's eyes.

"There's only one course of action that we can take. We'll go down to the throne room and get captured ourselves." He stepped into the ship, and the rest of the team followed, arranging themselves along the wall.

"Roxas suggested something to us a possible counterattack if he were to get taken. Chip and I feel that it is the best thing to do in this situation."

The ship shifted beneath them, shuddering as it latched onto the pulley system that would take it out of the hangar. As Chip found his spot at the helm, Dale turned towards the group, fully expecting the anger that he found.

"Is there a particular reason why the ship is moving, Captains?" Zexion's cool voice floated over them, emotionless as always. Of the entire team, he seemed to be the only one unaffected by the sudden chance of plans. Even so, they thought his cold gaze held accusation and judgment, and they looked away.

"It was on Roxas' orders. We were to leave if he got captured."

They jumped, as much from nervousness as surprise, when Axel's fist made contact with the metal interior of the ship.

"Are you telling me that he _asked you_ to abandon him? Is that what you three were whispering about behind my back? I should wring your useless little necks, you fuckers!"

He lunged towards them, but, at the last moment, Demyx said something which decisively changed his mind.

"We have to go back. This planet has been dead practically since we got here. If we leave its atmosphere now, we're tossing away any chance we have of getting them back. It's been feeding off our energy, and without that energy to sustain it, this planet's toast."

Dale hid his face behind his paw, trembling under the weight of his guilt.

"You heard him, damn it! Turn around!"

Axel turned towards them, and the desperation on his face was enough to made him shiver out of his skin.

"We can't."

"_What?"_

"I said we can't turn around. The ship is programmed to leave the planet's gravitational pull before it can be maneuvered, to avoid any potential collisions with other vessels. We can't turn around."

Riku closed his eyes, pushing all thoughts of the ship from his mind, and wondered how the hell Roxas and Sora had turned out to be so God damned similar.

Behind them, Disney Castle disappeared.

--

_He was floating, his limbs imbued with a weightlessness that he'd come to expect from the dark. It pulled at him, even as it pushed him away, and he almost began to understand why Riku had chosen to ally himself with it. Here, it didn't hurt. Here, the ache that had begun to fester inside his chest was nothing but a memory. Here, where the darkness stroked every inch of his skin with its poisonous touch, he thought that he might be able, at least for a moment, to forget._

_That was really the problem, wasn't it? This remembrance. His inability to let go of anything that had happened to him, everything that he'd done. Since his return, every death that stained his hands haunted him, and he couldn't forget. But here, someone was whispering into his ear, urging him to forget everything. He could stay forever, floating in this endless sea of nothingness, and simply cease to be. It was...a tempting notion, to say the least._

_Something silky pressed against his hand, and in the darkness his fingers clenched around another strip of dark. Riku's blindfold._

"_What were you thinking, Riku...?"_

"_I had to fool myself. If I could somehow make myself believe that I was dark, I could find you."_

"_But I looked for you!" Sora reached out, pulling the blindfold close to his chest as he tried to touch Riku, looking for some small source of warmth in the never-ending cold._

"_I didn't want you to find me. I...needed to see you on my terms. If you saw me like I was...let's just say you wouldn't have liked what you saw."_

"_I'm always happy to see you. Even now, even when I don't think I'm really seeing you at all." Laying there, floating, he'd had a lot of time to wonder. He still wasn't sure that he liked the conclusions that he'd come up with._

"_Riku..." he closed his eyes, choosing to see the dark inside his head instead of the darkness that surrounded him, "am I dead?"_

"_You know, when Xehanort said that hearts had darkness at their center, and you said that they had light, I think you were both wrong. I think it's different for everybody. Even now, when the darkness is all around you, I can still see your heart. It's like a lighthouse. It brought me here, you know...If you were dead, really, truly dead, do you think your heart would still glow?"_

"_I don't know."_

_Riku laughed lightly, pushing away the doubt in Sora's mind._

_  
"I wouldn't think so, but hell, what do I know? I'm not even really here. But, just so you know, I don't think your light will ever go out. Just ask Cloud. That last little bit is always the hardest to get rid of."_

"_I know. Riku...I...."_

"_Don't, Sora. Don't worry about it. Just get yourself out of this mess first, alright? I'll still be around when it's over."_

"_...Alright."_

--

"Sora, it's unfortunate, but I think we're going to die."

Sora smiled, shaking his head slightly and grinning, as much as he didn't feel like smiling. After the dream he'd had, he almost couldn't force himself to make the effort.

"Way to be blunt, Roxas. What happened to all that lovely optimism they taught you in the Organization?"

Looking down, Roxas idly wondered the same thing.

It was damp and dark, and he was reminded so strongly of The World That Never Was that he half expected to hear Marluxia coming down the hallway, arguing with Luxord over his last lost bet. The room they were in had probably been a wine cellar, at some point, but he couldn't see anyone wanting to store anything there now. Cobwebs dusted the ceiling, hanging low and covered in grime. The door must have been left open at some point in the past, because leaves littered the corners, leaving behind dust and dirt to rub into Roxas' skin. He wasn't secured, but that was only a small blessing. It wasn't as though he'd ever learned how to use magic, and his Keyblade had been useless since he'd separated from Sora. Hand to hand combat had never been one of his strengths.

"I must have missed that lesson. For God's sake, Sora! How can you just sit there like you haven't been stuck in this room for days, living on nothing but air? You're not dead yet, you still have your magic, and you still have your keyblade. Next time they come to talk to us, we'll just have to take them down!"

Sora sighed, slumping further against the wall.

"It's not that easy, Roxas. I'm exhausted. If I use magic now, I'll kill myself, not that any spells I might manage to bring up would do any damage anyway. And I _don't_ have the Keyblade anymore. That was the first thing she took."

"Shit."

"If I could have gotten myself out by now, don't you think I would have? I don't have a death wish, even though Riku swears I do. I just keep getting stuck in these situations."

It certainly did seem that way, Roxas thought. The door slid open, and Roxas instantly understood everything. In some sick, perverted way, it all suddenly made sense.

"Larxene. How lovely to see you again."

She looked exactly the same. Her blond hair was slicked back, leaving the tendrils exposed like she always had, and the clothes she was wearing, even though the Organization's cloak was gone, were still dark and angry. She'd always been pretty, Roxas thought, and that hadn't changed, but he'd never been able to bring himself to like her. Even though most of the people in the Organization had no qualms with taking lives, Larxene had always hurt people just for the sake of causing them pain. As she smiled at him, he was reminded of everything that he'd hated about Organization XIII, and he grimaced.

"Roxas, honey, it's been a long time. We should catch up after this is all over with. How do you like the accommodations?"

"Fuck you. At least now I have justification for why I never liked you."

She laughed, and it grated on his ears like it always had. It was a laugh dripping with judgment and anger, and he'd always hated it. Laughter was supposed to be happy, full of joy. How could anyone live with themselves if their laughter was evil?

"It's alright, Roxas, I never liked you either."

Sora closed his eyes, breathing deeply. Larxene. It sounded _so _familiar. Why couldn't he remember where he'd seen her before? His lightning attack hadn't worked, and for a brief moment he'd understood why that was, but it had retreated into his deeper memories once again. Larxene…

_Naminé…_

"I figured you were still a part of Sora, so imagine my surprise when you show up in that castle perfectly separate. I'll bet Axel loved that, didn't he?"

Roxas clenched his fists, desperately tamping down on the almost overwhelming desire to beat her face in. Until he knew what was left in the deck, he couldn't afford to play his hand.

"Axel's dead."

A momentary look of surprise flitted across her features, but Roxas couldn't help the feeling of dread that threaded down his spine.

"Dead? To tell you the truth, I'm rather surprised you would choose something so insignificant to lie to me about, Roxas. I know for a fact that Axel was resurrected. All of us were. Well, all of us except Xemnas and Saix, of course. Even Mickey wasn't stupid enough to give them another chance."

Sora's eyes flashed, and the image of Mickey, slumped over in his throne was thrown to the forefront of his mind.

"Don't you dare talk about him like that," he growled.

"I'll talk about him however I like, So-ra." She ran a ruby-red fingernail down his cheek, and it sickened him just as much as it had the first time. "Your friends were stupid enough to destroy the portal in Disney Castle, so I don't have to worry about them coming for you anymore. I can do whatever I want to you, and you can't do anything to stop me."

Roxas made to lunge at her, but she held out her hand towards him, shaking her finger in front of his eyes.

"I wouldn't do that I I were you. Your body's still feeling the effects from when my pet captured you. There's no point in you wasting your strength, Roxas."

He snorted, anything but amused.

"How considerate."

"I do try. Now, I suppose you're all wondering why I brought you here, and I suppose I should let in on the secret. To be brutally honest, I brought you here to kill you. I want to rule the world, and you, my lovely Sora, are the the only person standing in my way. And as Roxas here is a part of you, I thought I might make a clean break of it and kill him too. I'm not sure why I haven't done it yet, but, then again, why does a cat toy with its mouse before breaking its neck? It's just another one of life's little mysteries."

Sora looked at her, his gaze filled with equal measures of shock and disgust, but Roxas couldn't help but laugh.

"You know, Larxene, I'm amazed that no one in the Organization ever noticed how insane you were."

"Oh, of course they noticed. You think Xemnas didn't have a plan for every one of us? A reason why we were allowed into the group? Surely you didn't think we were the only Nobodies in existence. What made us, the fated thirteen, desirable to a man like Xenmas? He offered you a spot because you would help him gain the keyblades, even indirectly. Zexion's power of manipulation was rivaled by no one. Axel's passionate fighting style gave the Superior a warrior who would never lose. Of _course_ he knew. He just died before he could do anything about it."

"So you decided to do something about it yourself?"

She ruffled his hair, messing the already bedraggled blond spikes.

"Couldn't have said it better myself. Oh, if you two have any unresolved issues to work out, now might be a good time."

Patting Roxas on the head one last time, she wandered back out the door, slamming and locking it behind her.

He couldn't say that he was surprised. Maybe a bit shocked that Mickey would bring her back, but certainly not surprised that she'd turned on him. The Larxene that he knew wouldn't have batted an eyelash at murder, especially if it was to accomplish something. But to what means? What good would killing the King do, if his loyal servants were there to to shake the usurper from the throne? But...no one was in the castle, and the implications of that sent a chill down his spine.

"Roxas, Riku's not coming, is he?"

Sighing, he dragged a hand through his blond hair, turning away from Sora's accusatory blue eyes, so much like his own it almost made him sick.

"No. None of them are."

"I thought so."

A shuddering cough racked his body, and the dryness of his throat made it seem all the worse. It was strange, but Roxas had the fleeting thought that this was a fitting end for the Keyblade masters. Keyblade masters who, without their blades, were masters of nothing. Sitting in a dark, damp wine cellar. After all, hadn't their time passed? That was the reason for Mickey sending them to Sora's world, wasn't it? Because they weren't useful to him anymore? He'd been inside Sora. He knew how he'd felt about the King. There had been little love lost between them, but miles of respect. At least, he thought, Sora deserved to know the truth.

"I asked Chip and Dale to leave the atmosphere if I got captured. I don't know if you know, but the planet was dying. By the time they would have left, its life force would have been completely drained, and it would have disappeared. I...didn't want them to get caught up in this if they didn't have to be. I hate to say it, but I assumed that you'd already been killed, and, if they got me, I wouldn't be far behind you."

"Don't worry, Roxas, I understand. Disney Castle was in such back shape, I'm surprised you guys made it in time. I guess...I don't know...I was just hoping that for once I wouldn't have to get myself out of this. Because, I don't know if I can this time, you know? This sucks."

Sighing, he thumped his head back against the wall, easing the pressure on his shoulders.

"I remember now, you know. About Naminé, and Castle Oblivion. Larxene reminded me. I don't suppose you know what happened to her, do you? You guys were...pretty close, right?"

"Not really. I didn't really know her at all, to tell you the truth. She tried to tell me that being a part of you was something I should look forward to, that I would somehow be 'completing' myself. She seemed alright with the idea. She was Kairi's nobody, and I wouldn't be too surprised if Mickey just left them together."

"Seriously? Kairi, huh...weird. I can't say I saw that one coming. It'd be a bummer though if Mickey didn't bring her back though, she was cool. Before she wiped our memories, I was kind of hoping I'd get to see her again sometime." he trailed off, staring at his fingers as they clenched into a fist. "You know, I might have to agree with you, Roxas. It's unfortunate, but I think we're going to die."

Roxas smiled.

"Like heroes?"

"Yeah, like fucking heroes."

--

How many of you guessed Larxene? If you didn't, it's probably because you hated her so much that you shoved her out of your mind (like I did) or because you didn't know about her in the first place. So, let me give you a brief bio on Larxene, AKA Number XII.

Larxene was one of the featured evil-doers in Chain of Memories on the GBA. She was sick and very sadistic (so, no, I didn't make that up) and she was buddy-buddy with Marluxia. She had these little...hair tendrils(?) that helped to conduct electricity (at least...I'm assuming that's why she had them...but, then again, why does Marluxia have pink hair?) because her element was lightning/electricity. She died by Sora's hand aaaand Axel hated her. Which gives me even more reason to dislike her.


	9. More Than a Savior

"_No one would miss me."_

"_That's not true! I would..."_

When he'd lost Roxas the first time, Axel had known that he wouldn't be able to handle losing him a second time. The episode with the fake Twilight Town had only managed to cement that idea inside his mind. Without Roxas, he wasn't Axel anymore. He was Number VIII, nothing more than just another figure in a black cloak. He'd tried, oh _yes_, he'd tried to get Roxas to come back. Not that he wanted Roxas to be a part of Organization XIII, but his other option was significantly less sweet. He had tried, but he did not succeed. Roxas, with his never-failing will and passionate soul, had given up his life as a free man rather than return to the Organization. It had burned him to realize it—that Roxas wanted nothing to do with him—but when Mickey had brought them back, it had been just like it always was. The love they'd felt each other, a love that they were supposedly unable to feel, had come back like it had never left.

Now, Roxas was gone again, and Axel wasn't so sure he _would_ be able to handle it.

If he didn't know Roxas as well as he did, he would have thought that Roxas' sacrifice was unjustified, even foolish. Which, of course, it _was, _but Axel knew why he had done it. Of anything in his personality, Roxas was stubborn. If he thought something was right, if he thought he had an obligation like that which he'd felt he had for King Mickey and Sora, he would do anything within his power to fulfill it. Just the same as he had tried to keep Axel out of danger.

Still, it burned. Like a festering sore beneath his skin, the knowledge burned at Axel. That Roxas would abandon him again, even knowing what effect it had had on Axel the first time, hurt him like no physical wound could hurt. They had been given a new life together, a second chance, and Roxas had thrown it back in his face.

"God DAMMIT! You little jerk, I'm not letting you get away from me this time!" He slammed his hand onto the metal of the console, jerking the cabin out of its awkward silence.

"Dude, you need to _calm down_." Demyx reached out, gripping Axel's shoulder in his hand, but the anger in Axel's eyes shocked him into flinching away. Being able to control water wasn't a coincidence, Demyx knew. It fit his personality entirely. He was fluid and peaceful, he liked to avoid confrontation, but didn't shy away when it was forced upon him. Water was as perfectly suited to him as fire was to Axel. Angry, passionate, blistering fire.

"Don't tell me what to fucking do, Demyx. I don't care if Mr. King's Messenger over there," he glared at Riku as he slouched against the side of the ship, "has already decided to give up on his boyfriend, but I'm sure as hell not going to give up on Roxas without a fight.

Zexion looked up from where his head had been resting on his folded hands, pinning Axel with his intense stare.

"Don't you think Roxas had a good reason to make us abandon him? I think you underestimate him."

"Of _course_ he didn't have a fucking good reason. Have you ever even met Roxas? He _lives_ to make stupid, undeveloped decisions! He's the hero of rushing into things without a plan."

Zexion sighed, looking out the window and wishing rather idly that he hadn't woken up that morning.

"You don't know that." His tone was that of a parent placating his child, and it pissed Axel of to no end. "Forget the fact that you have no way of going to him. Even if you did, you might be screwing something up which he has entirely under his control."

Axel grinned, a feral, manic grin, and wrenched his shoulder out of Demyx's grip.

"That, Zexion, is where you're wrong."

He threw out his hand, pulling from the reservoir deep inside of himself that had been shut off for so long. They would all recognize it—they had all used it at some point, some more than others—but they knew the consequences of it. Along with their return by King Mickey's hand, they all knew that an unspoken agreement had been made that they were never to turn to the darkness again.

Demyx tugged on Axel's hand as the portal opened up in front of them, suddenly much less calm than he had been a few moments ago.

"No, Axel, you can't! If you use that portal again...you know you won't be able to come back to this. The life you might have envisioned yourself having with Roxas, the future that King Mickey gave you away from the Organization—it'll all disappear. Going back to the darkness now is the worst possible thing you could do to yourself!"

Axel sighed, some of the passionate anger leaving him now that he had a new path to take.

"I know, Demyx. But that future doesn't mean anything to me without Roxas."

He stepped forwards, towards the deep blackness that signified the space between places, and the blue tendrils of the portal reached out, softly stroking his skin in comfort.

"You know you can only bring one person back with you through that portal, regardless of where it's going." Zexion looked at Riku as he said this, wondering why the King's Messenger seemed so calm. It was difficult for him to believe that Riku would have given up on Sora so readily, especially since he'd been so eager to find him only a few hours before, but he let it go for the moment. "You can only bring back Roxas. If he's not already dead, can you really bring yourself to leave Sora there?"

"My loyalty lies with Roxas. The only reason I came on this God forsaken rescue mission was to protect him. I like Sora, he's a good kid, but if it means choosing between the two, there's no competition. Sora, as much as it may be unfair, has played his part in this."

"Haven't we all? It doesn't seem right for someone to fight so hard for peace and then be denied the right to live in it."

"No, it doesn't." And with that, Axel stepped forward into the portal, armed with the knowledge that, wherever the darkness took him, Roxas was at the end of it.

--

"_There's no knowledge that has the power to change your fate "_

Roxas stared at the ceiling, his hands folded in his lap, and wondered how it had come to this. He knew that he'd been stupid, thinking that his life could possibly be normal, but he hadn't been able to help himself. A life with Axel, away from the Organization, nary a nobody in sight. It had been an interesting idea while it had lasted. He wasn't one to deny anyone the right to life, but he was really beginning to wish that Larxene's parents had never decided to birth their child.

It was ridiculous, really. For people who were—generally speaking, at least—pretty intelligent, every single plan they'd come up with had been almost incredibly stupid. What had he been thinking? He knew what would happen when he went into the Hall of the Cornerstone, but he'd waltzed right in, practically begging the gummi captains to abandon him once he did. Not to mention the twisted logic they'd all used on Axel to get him to go along with the plan. If it hadn't been such a dangerous mistake, Roxas probably would have laughed. It was no wonder they'd all gotten themselves killed, if this was the way they went about solving their problems.

He had a few options, but none of them really appealed to him very much. He could leave Sora to rot, escaping through the door and hoping there was a gummi ship handy, but the only reason he'd come in the first place was to help rescue his Somebody, so he wasn't going to just leave him. He thought he might be able to summon a dark portal, but that idea was dismissed from his mind almost before he'd even thought it. To enter the darkness by himself would allow it back into his heart, and he'd never been able to bring anyone else with him, no matter how hard he'd tried back with the Organization. It wasn't an option. Of all the people that he'd met, Sora was the one that deserved to be left untainted.

Of course, he could attempt to ambush Larxene with his five foot two frame and highly specialized fighting skills, but he didn't foresee that ending in their favor.

Looking at Sora, he couldn't help but wonder whether his well-being was going to be a concern for much longer. His breath came out hollowly, and even with his minuscule bit of medical knowledge, Roxas knew that wasn't good, and it had been like that since he'd woken up the first time. If Sora didn't make it, then he'd think about getting himself out—by whatever means he had at his disposal.

An unpleasant feeling tickling his senses made the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention instantly, and it took him only a few seconds to recognize what it was. It was the sudden electric charge to the air that preceded the opening of a dark portal, and there were only two people he could think of who would currently be stupid enough to use it—Axel and Demyx. Since he didn't think Demyx would have any particular reason to make the sacrifice that was needed, it didn't surprise him when the blue tendrils appeared out of the blackness, ushering Axel into the room.

For a moment, he was happy, but it was fleeting and its heels were followed by an overwhelming despair. He should have known Axel would do anything to get to him. It didn't take him long to realize that it was almost entirely his fault. That, by destroying Disney Castle, he had forced his lover to find another way to reach him. He should have known that Axel would never abandon him, no matter how stupid it was for him to follow.

"I love you, Roxas, but you're a real asshole sometimes."

Axel walked over, his long legs eating up the floor, and dropped down onto the stones, wrapping his arms around Roxas.

"I know. I was an idiot." He stopped, looking over at Sora, running a steady hand over Axel's hair. "It's Larxene, you know. She killed King Mickey when he brought her back to life and took over Disney Castle. She's got it in her head that she's going to be the next ruler of the planet system."

Axel turned his eyes toward the door, as if expecting her to be standing right there.

"I always knew she was a bitch."

Roxas chuckled lightly, but it wasn't a particularly happy sound.

"Yeah, I guess we were right about her all along. But listen, Axel, I know you came here to take me back with you, but you can't. Something's wrong with Sora. If he doesn't get out of here soon...I don't know what'll happen to him."

"If you think I'm just going to leave you here then you're sadly mistaken, Roxas. I would never consider putting his health before yours."

The arms around Roxas tightened slightly, rubbing small circles on his back.

"Riku would kill you if you left Sora here to die."

"Riku's not going to be a problem for me anymore. He'll go back to his lovely, normal life, but you know what happens when you use a dark portal."

Roxas opened his mouth to argue, because the spark of pain that laced through him at the thought was anything but pleasant, but the opening of the cellar door stopped the words in his throat. Larxene stood in the doorway, framed by the light from the hallway, and she looked mildly surprised to see Axel there, as though she hadn't even considered him a possible kink in her plans.

"Hello, Axel."

He stood slowly, but it seemed that his hand was around her throat in an instant.

"You made a mistake, Larxene. If you'd just messed with Sora, I wouldn't have had a problem, but the moment you took Roxas, you made me a part of this."

His fingers had begun to heat in his anger, leaving harsh red marks on the pale skin of her neck, and the fear that she hadn't felt with either of her two prisoners was finally making itself known. She had never told anyone, but Axel had always frightened her. His tendency to fly off the handle make him unpredictable, and that made her uncomfortable. With Axel, she never knew what she was going to be dealing with, and his fingers were starting to burn.

She tried to slide some electricity down his arm, but her element had always been rather ineffective against his, another thing that she hated. Idly, she registered that her throat wasn't the only thing burning, but it had been a long time since she'd been human enough to feel pain. She tried to sigh, but found that she couldn't breathe, and she realized that this was a rather pathetic way to die after her lofty resurrection. Despite that, her only regret as her flesh burned and charred was that she couldn't preserve her beauty in death.

--

Sora still hadn't woken up, and Roxas had a sinking feeling that he wasn't asleep so much as unconscious. They'd been wandering around this place for what seemed like hours, Sora sprawled inelegantly across Axel's skinny back. It was as though they were rats in a maze, only they were fairly confident that there was no exit.

"Geez, Roxas...this kid's as heavy as you!" Axel hiked Sora up on his back where he'd been sliding off, gripping onto his legs more firmly. "If we don't figure out a way out of here soon, I'm going to have to stop for a breather."

Roxas looked down the hallway, truly beginning to worry. It wasn't impossible that Larxene had been using Dark Portals to get around. If that was the case, they could walk around fruitlessly for days without finding anything.

"Let's take a break now. Wandering aimlessly isn't doing us any good."

They both slid down the wall, dumping Sora unceremoniously on the floor next to them. They would have—should have—felt badly for wasting time that could have been spent searching, but they didn't have the energy.

"I could use a portal to get you home, Roxas. You can change your mind about Sora. Knowing him, he would want us to leave him anyway." Axel grabbed a lock of Roxas' blond hair between his fingers, tugging on it gently. "I know you don't want to, but we _could_..."

"No, Axel."

"We can't just sit here forever! There's no fucking way out! She was obviously using Dark Portals to get wherever she needed to go, so she didn't bother having anything else here. I'm not going to sit here and wait for us to die, Roxas."

Roxas turned his head away, pulling the hair out of Axel's fingers.

"Sora's world—Riku's world—is a light place. It doesn't have people like us there. You know what happens to people who have turned to the dark but attempt to enter a place of the light, Axel. That's why no one from the Organization could ever get into the Hall of the Cornerstone. If you went to Destiny Islands, you wouldn't get out alive. Unless we turned the whole world dark, which is something I'm not willing to do. Even if I were considering leaving Sora here to rot, I wouldn't let that happen to you."

Axel sighed, and a silence followed, broken only by Sora briefly struggling to regain consciousness and failing. It was creepy, really, how utterly still everything was. They had a pretty firm idea that Larxene had been the only other living thing there—and she was dead, now.

_'Roxas...'_

The voice came from seemingly nowhere, filling Roxas' ears even though there was no one but Axel there. It was strangely feminine, not a voice he thought he would recognize even if it were accompanied by a face.

_'Don't worry about talking to me, just listen.'_

He clenched his hands into fists, unnerved but reassured at the same time.

_'You have done a lot of good things, Roxas. Neither you or Sora deserve what that wretched woman had planned for you. Larxene...sometimes I wished my husband hadn't been such a bleeding heart, but that was what made him who he was. Anyway, we're going to get you out of there. Me, Donald, Goofy, and the others. My husband Mickey sent us somewhere—I'm not quite sure where—but we still have a small amount of power. It has been decided that we'll use it on saving you three. It's the least we could do.'_

"Who are you?"

"Huh?" Axel asked, confused at the strange question. He was ignored.

_'Queen Minnie, of course. Or, I suppose, just Minnie now. Just as you are Roxas, rather than Number XIII, now that Xemnas is gone. A queen cannot be a queen without her kingdom. But, that isn't what is important right now. I must impress something upon you. I know Axel returned to the dark to protect you, and, while that is an honorable intention, I will not be able to help him if he turns to it again. By entering our portal, all three of you will be cleansed of dark influence. I urge you to keep a careful eye on him, and I wish you both a long, peaceful, second life.'_

Before Roxas could stop to consider how strange the situation was, a flash of light sparked from the hallway in front of them. Axel immediately tensed, expecting and preparing for a battle, but the white door that had materialized in front of them was far from threatening. 'Was it really as easy as that?' Roxas thought. 'Was this what Sora felt?'

Roxas had lived the majority of his life doing things that people disagreed with. He'd joined Organization XIII with a not-so-subtle hint from the Superior, an Organization that everyone in the known universe despised. Then he'd even left _that_, intent on finding why he had been the one to receive the Keyblade. Without help. And it had gotten him killed.

A simple thought swam through his mind, and he wondered what would have been different if he'd had help from people cared for him.

"You know, Roxy, I'm not even going to ask." Axel bent over, picking Sora up from where he was sprawled across the floor and slinging him over his back. Walking towards the portal, he turned towards Roxas, raising an eyebrow because his lover hadn't moved an inch. "Are we going to get out of here, or what?"

It may have been a bit strange, but Roxas was sure that he'd never felt as pure as when he stepped through that blinding white light walking next to the man that he loved.


	10. Live Like This

When Sora woke up, all he could see was blinding white. Which didn't really make much sense, considering that the room he should have been in hadn't had any white in it at all.

He remembered watching Roxas. His blond head had been resting against the wall, and his blue eyes—eyes so similar to Sora's—had been closed, as though not being able to see the situation would make it go away. He remembered how cold his legs had felt, pressed up against the floor. He remembered how his chest had felt like it was filled with something unpleasant and foreign. He remembered closing his eyes, thinking that maybe sleeping for the next five years would be an excellent idea.

"Ah, I see that you're awake! It boggles my mind how someone could manage to contract pneumonia in the middle of the summer, but you certainly managed."

Pneumonia...?

"Your friends—the ones that brought you in—left a while ago. Said they had something important to take care of and ran off." She wandered around the room, checking his vital signs and testing the heart-rate monitor. It wasn't until she added something to a bag near his head that he noticed the needle sticking out of his arm and the clear fluid pumping through the tube into his body.

"I don't know how you managed to get yourself in the state you're in. Really, you should have known better. Even without the pneumonia, you're so dehydrated I'm surprised you're even alive. Honestly, you'd think you'd at least try to take better care of yourself. Here, drink this." Holding a cup of water up to his mouth, she tipped it gently, and the cool liquid felt heavenly against his throat.

When she put the cup down on his bedside table, next to a pitcher of water that he was sure would be too heavy for him to lift, he tried to ask where Roxas had gone. Who had been with him. Why he'd left. But, for some odd reason, the words got lodged in his throat, sticking there no matter how badly he wanted to say something—_anything_.

The nurse looked at him worriedly, fluffing up his bedsheets and tucking them gently around him.

"I'll have Doctor Kadowaki in for some final check-ups, but earlier this morning she said that you would probably be able to leave as soon as you woke up. Not without someone to help you, of course." She left the room, leaving Sora alone with his thoughts.

He felt very ill—there was no denying that. It probably would have affected him more had he not spent the last few years of his life being injured, but he wasn't stupid. He knew when he wasn't healthy. Still, he couldn't stop the feeling of helplessness, sitting there in that bed, not able to move any part of his body particularly well. He was the Keyblade master, for God's sake!

Slumping back on the pillows, he remembered that he wasn't. Not anymore.

"Well, now that you're awake, perhaps you can answer some questions I have." He opened his eyes, and his gaze rested on the doctor, a middle-aged woman who had been working at the hospital since he was rushed into the emergency room when he was four with a broken arm. She could always make him feel guilty with a single look, and he'd never quite gotten used to that.

"Hey, Doctor K."

She sat down on the edge of his bed, forgoing the normal separation between patient and doctor.

"Sora, I'm going to be straight with you. Now that you're eighteen, I'm leaving it up to you what you tell your parents, but that also means that my concerns are given straight to you. You just got out of the hospital a few days ago, and now you're back with a relatively severe case of pneumonia. It boggles my mind how it managed to develop so fast, but it certainly did. I know you always had some crazy idea in your mind that you could do anything, but the truth of the matter is that you're mortal. Completely. One hundred percent. If you don't start taking care of yourself, you're going to be in for one hell of a reality check when you realize that I can't cure everything."

Pouring him some water, she dropped a bottle of pills on his bedside table.

"I'm trying, Doctor K! I swear...I don't know how I keep getting myself into the situations."

With a sigh, she brushed the hair back off his forehead.

"I'm not going to ask what happened. But, you have my opinion. Your days of being reckless should be coming to an end. Regardless, I called your parents, and they're on their way. You can leave with them, but your body will regret it if you try to do anything strenuous for awhile. Alright?"

He nodded. Even without her advice, he knew. For some reason, he couldn't bring himself to be overly concerned about himself when the worry he had for the others was still fresh in his mind. Friends...the nurse had said 'friends'. More than one. Roxas? Axel? Demyx and Zexion? ....Riku? It was too much to think about. Although...the people who had been on the gummi ship probably weren't in danger. They would float around, looking for wherever Larxene had been hiding, and would come back once they didn't find it. Roxas, on the other hand...nothing was sure about Roxas.

"Right."

"Good. I don't want to see you here for a long time, Sora."

--

Sora burrowed more deeply under the covers, irritated by the light streaming through the window as much as the incessant knocking on his door.

"Sora, Honey, are you awake? How do you feel about going to school today?"

His mother's overly sweet voice carried through the fabric no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. How did he feel? He felt like he wanted to jump out the fucking window, or melt into their ugly brown carpet. As for wanting to go to school again...he had to hold back a snort at that. As if he would ever feel like going to that hell again. He could remember banging his head against the student desks, complaining loudly and abrasively to anyone who would listen that Destiny Islands History was tantamount to torture.

Well, at least now he knew that was completely untrue.

"Honey?"

She tapped on his door again, before gently opening it and peering inside. From under the comforter, Sora blearily opened one eye, staring at her as though she might get the nonverbal hint to leave him the hell alone.

"I had pneumonia, Mom. It's not like I'm going to get better overnight."

"It's not overnight. You've been out of the hospital for two weeks, Sora! If you ever want to get better, you're going to have to get out of the house. Go outside. Go to the park or something if you're not going to school."

Sora didn't want to go outside. He didn't even want to get out of the god damned _bed_. Of course, he couldn't tell his mom that. The only people he was interested in talking to were either missing or presumed dead.

"No. Maybe tomorrow."

She sighed, the long, drawn out sigh of someone who disapproved but didn't want to voice it.

"Fine. I called Hana's house, but no one picked up. Maybe you should think about trying to get a hold of Riku—if anyone can get you out of this damned funk you're in, it's him."

He tugged the covers more tightly around his shoulders at the reminder. It wouldn't matter how many times his mother called the house, because no one would ever be home. He wouldn't be surprised if the two people that lived there hadn't just mysteriously disappeared. That was how the other world worked—it stole a lot of things, and sometimes it forgot to give them back. He hadn't heard from anyone, not a single person, and it was driving him up the wall with worry. .

The door closed behind his mother, pushing the room into semi-darkness again. Thin streamers of light flowed through the slats in the blinds, illuminating brief strips of floor, but Sora's mood was depressing enough to blot them out.

Axel and Roxas were gone. The nurses had told him that they were the two who dropped him off at the hospital, but when he had gone to their houses later that afternoon, a woman he didn't know had answered the door. Sora was fairly certain that they had somehow disappeared into the void that made up the other worlds. Their families were gone, no one remembered who they were. That was just how it worked: one day they were there, the next they were gone. Shoving his face into the pillow, Sora couldn't help but wish he'd been taken to wherever it was that they had decided to go.

"What the fuck am I supposed to do now, Riku? What happens when everything I ever wanted gets taken away? What then?"

_The Keyblade chooses its master. And it chose you._

_If two people share one, their destinies become intertwined. They'll remain a part of each other's lives, no matter what._

_My heart may be weak. And sometimes, it may even give in. But deep down, there's a light that never goes out._

_Don't ever forget: wherever you go, I'm always with you. _

It started as tiny pinpricks of feeling in the tips of his fingers. Then, slowly, the feeling began to spread down his arms, through his chest, to every single part of his body—this strange tingling, like thousands of invisible hands were just barely skimming their fingers over his skin. Like little reservoirs of power that should have taken years to fill were brimming over in moments.

"Sora?"

His eyes sprang open, and he sat up in bed like a shock. The sensation of vertigo made him dizzy, but it was well worth it.

"Minnie?"

"I'm sorry to bother you again, but I think you're the only one who can help. See...now that Larxene is gone, the pollution in the Hall of the Cornerstone is gone too, and now you can travel to the vault where everyone is trapped."

"Wait...who was trapped in there? We thought that Mickey had stowed you away somewhere."

He heard a someone nervous chuckle echo throughout the room.

"Well, he did. Unfortunately, he had to make it so that we couldn't get out again, to keep us safe. We need your Keyblade to help us get out of here. It _does_ open any door, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, but Larxene took it. I haven't been able to use it in weeks."

"No she didn't. Look down, Sora."

And he did. And what he saw made him so happy that he thought his joy might just possibly burst through his chest—there, on his bedspread, was the one thing that he never thought he'd see again. His Keyblade. It was the basic model, the Kingdom Key, silver, with a yellow handle, but it was more thrilling than anything else he could imagine.

"She never took it from you. I don't think she had the power."

But...he'd been _so sure_ that it had been gone forever.

"Close your eyes, Sora. I'll take you where you need to be."

–

When he opened his eyes again, for a brief moment he thought he'd died, because everything was so completely white that he couldn't be anywhere other than in Heaven. Or, at least, that's what his first impression was. As he got a better look, it became clear that he was inside the mansion in Twilight Town, in the room which was painted in a glaring, pure white. Pictures covered the walls completely, but they weren't the pictures that he remembered. More had been added, most of which had nothing to do with him, or Roxas, or Donald and Goofy. There were pictures of the forest, of the clock tower and the train station. He saw a few sketches of the yearly struggle tournament, of Seifer and Vivi, but that was about all that he recognized. Everything else seemed like it had come from very far away. Maybe another world? He didn't know.

"It's about time you got here." He whirled around at the sound, coming face to face with Namine. She was smiling that serene smile of hers, the one which, when coming from Kairi, had always managed to calm him down. The similarities between the two women were obvious, and he wondered whether that was what people saw when they looked at him and Roxas.

"What are you doing here, Namine?"

She chuckled a little, and gently ran her hand down his arm.

"King Mickey made me the guardian for this room. It's the royal treasury most of the time, but now that there are actual people in there my job is a bit more interesting. I guess this is how he apologized for not giving me my own life, like he did with Roxas. Did Queen Minnie send you here to let them out?"

He held up his Keyblade, and the light streaming in from the open window glanced off the steel as if it knew it was being talked about. It wasn't as handsomely made as Oathkeeper, but it would get the job done, hopefully.

"Do you know what happened to them? Roxas...and Axel, I mean. They left me at the hospital, and I haven't seen them since."

"They're gone, Sora. I guess I should be happy that King Mickey didn't put me on that plane, because I don't think they were supposed to exist there. As Nobodies, I don't think they could live in a place like that. Minnie says that they're gone, but that wherever they ended up, they're together. And that's really what matters, right?"

So, the world had taken them back, just like he thought it would.

"What about Riku?"

She bit her lip, walking back towards the long table in the middle of the room. Her sketchbooks and pencils covered the top, and she gently perused them, looking for one drawing in particular.

"I don't know about him. I think he might be in the vault, but that's just speculation, really. The gummi ship they were all on disappeared a few hours after Larxene was killed, but Minnie wouldn't say what happened to it. So, I can't say for sure."

Pulling one picture from the pile, she held it out to him. It was clearly Riku, down to his long silver hair and stomach-exposing vest, and he was smiling like he used to before everything happened.

"Here." She wrapped his fingers around the corner. "I used to talk to him, you know? I don't know if he thought he was going crazy or what, but he used to speak to me like I was his friend. As I'm sure you can imagine, there isn't much to do here, so our little chats were the best part of my day, even if he thought I was all in his mind."

Sora looked down at the drawing, eyes quickly skimming over every detail. Riku was reclining on the beach, one leg straight out in front of him with an arm hooked around his other knee. Sora had to admit—it all looked terribly comfortable. But, there was one thing that didn't really fit. The ocean was smooth and flat, as it was on the best, most windless days, but the sky was covered over in dark, rolling storm clouds.

"What's with the clouds? Was it raining that day or something?"

She shook her head, taking the picture back for a moment and looking fondly at it.

"No, Riku always asked me to draw clouds in the pictures I made of him. He said that his life was filled with them anyway, so I should try to be as accurate as I could."

"But, Destiny Islands is always sunny. We get three hundred and twenty days of sun a year."

"I don't think he was speaking literally, Sora. He had a lot of things to be sad about, and I think he liked telling me about them because he didn't think I was really there—he felt like he could tell me and I wouldn't say anything." Wandering over to the window, she pulled back the curtain, looking out over the sprawling lawns in front of the mansion. With a sigh, she rested her head against the glass and closed her eyes. "He's in love with you, you know."

"Of course he loves me. I'm his best friend! We've known each other forever, so it would be kind of ridiculous if he didn't. I mean, we haven't really talked about it, but I guess I just assumed--"

She turned to him with a sympathetic smile on her face.

"No. He doesn't just love you, Sora. He's _in love_ with you. Like how you thought you were _in love_ with Kairi, and how I was with Roxas. His entire life, Riku has felt like he existed just to be with you, to protect you, to make sure you stayed safe. He...felt so guilty for everything that happened to you. That's why he was always kind of depressed—he never forgave himself."

At her words, the pit of Sora's stomach suddenly felt like it had dropped right through his feet, splattering ungracefully on the floor. _In love...with me?_ It didn't seem possible. They were best friends, sure, but Riku had never seemed like he wanted to be..._more_ than that. Not to mention that they were both men, and guys didn't really _do _things like that, did they?

Not that it was unheard of, obviously. There were a few people at Destiny High who had expressed such a preference, but he would never have pegged Riku to be one of them.

"Did he tell you that?"

"Not in so many words, but it was obvious. I loved Roxas for so long that I think I can pick up on that sort of thing easier than I should. I'm not asking you to do anything about it, but I just thought you should know—it wasn't something he ever planned on telling you, but I think you should have the right to make your own choice about it."

Ho looked down at the picture again, and saw the melancholy look on his friend's face as he stared out over the water. Could that really be what had been bothering him for so long? Had Riku been secretly harboring feelings for his best friend? It seemed too surreal to be possible, but it made a strange sort of sense.

"Thanks for telling me. Knowing Riku, he would have kept it to himself until he was tossing the dirt on my grave." The smile he sent her was a resoundingly fake one. "Well, I think we should let these people out of here, don't you?"

Namine nodded hurriedly, turning towards the glass-fronted cabinet on the far wall.

"They're in here. Like I said, this is usually just the royal treasury, but it was big enough for everyone in Disney Castle, I suppose."

He decided not to ask how an entire castle-full of occupants could fit in a cabinet.

"One more thing, Namine."

"Yeah?"

"You said that Roxas is gone...not just for a while, but for forever. _Gone_. And you said that you love him. I don't really get it."

For a moment, he thought he had stepped over some sort of imaginary line between what he was allowed to bring up and what he wasn't. This look came over her face, like she was remembering something particularly painful, and she closed her eyes tightly as though she wanted to hold onto the memory despite the pain.

"I've loved Roxas for a long time, Sora. I think part of it was because Kairi loves you, and that carried over. But, for almost as long as I have loved him, I've known that he wasn't for me. Axel and Roxas...they were practically made for each other. What right did I have to step in between that? When the only place I am able to go is this room, and the only love I could give to him was mine, which would have never been enough? At least now, wherever they are, they're happy. I think. That's all that really matters to me."

She ran her hand along the glass front of the cabinet, gently letting off the clasp holding the two doors shut. From where they stood, the shelves looked completely empty.

"How can you say that? Are you saying that you don't deserve to be happy?"

"Of course that's not what I'm saying. I think everyone should have a shot at happiness at least once in their lives. But, when you love someone, it's not really that simple anymore. Suddenly it doesn't matter so much anymore. Because, if they're happy, then you can rest easy. Like maybe looking out for them will be enough to make _you_ happy, too. Now, come over here, I need your help."

He stood for a moment, not understanding how someone could possibly feel that way, not understanding why she would give up her happiness just so someone else could feel it instead.

Ignoring the voice in the back of his mind that whispered _'Wouldn't you do that for Riku?'_, he walked over to the vault, instantly feeling the tingle of suppressed power running through his Keyblade. It was strange, but he'd never had to know when to use it. It was like some bit of intelligence had hidden itself away inside of it, and it always knew when it was needed.

His clothes began to wave in a nonexistent wind, and he pointed his arms out in front of him, clutching the Kingdom Key in his fists. He could feel the power move through him, using him as both producer and conduit. This feeling, one he hadn't felt in what seemed like forever, nourished him.

They both closed their eyes against the blinding jet of light that shot out from the end of the Keyblade, directly into the middle of the cabinet. Before their eyes, a giant doorway appeared, stretching all the way to the ceiling in ornately carved wood. When the glare had finally subsided, the door had been pushed open, and all Sora could hear was Riku's voice inside his mind, and all he could feel were waves gently lapping over his feet.

_"Well, there is one advantage to being me...something you could never imitate."_

_"Really? What's that?"_

_"Having you for a friend."  
_

–

A/N: Two chapters to go! (Three, if you count the epilogue)


	11. Life Goes On Without You

The room was filled with people. Most were simply standing there, staring dazedly toward the finally open door, while others we throwing their hands in the air or whooping like they thought they'd never see the light of day again. Sora took a moment to look behind him into the room where nothing good had ever really happened to anyone, and he had to wonder what it would feel like for that room to be the most exciting thing in the world to someone.

"Gawsh, everybody! It's Sora!"

"Oh shuddap! We can see for ourselves, you big palooka!"

Before he could turn around, he was assaulted by the sudden feeling of fur and feathers, and arms trapping his body in place.

Sora could probably count the number of hugs he'd been involved in—since becoming a teenager, at least—on one hand. Almost all of them had included Donald and Goofy somehow, so it was a comforting feeling to have them wrapped around him. Goofy towered over him, and his big hands dwarfed Sora in the same way that Sora dwarfed Donald, but no one had ever been left out. It was, he decided, a good feeling to know that someone had missed him enough to want to hug him.

"Hey, guys. I'm here to bust you out."

He smiled, wrapping his arms more firmly around them before letting them go entirely. The slow buzz of conversation had started in the room again, and soon it had become almost deafening in its excitement. These people probably didn't know how long they'd been stuck there, but they certainly understood that it had been an awfully long time.

"I'm glad you got here safely, Sora." Queen Minnie gracefully made her way through the throng, stopping in front of him, but he didn't really see her. Because, in that moment, he saw a brief flash of silver hair, and it drowned everything else out. Considering the fact that most of the people who lived at Disney Castle were either animals or charmed inanimate objects, there was only one person who would have any reason to be in this room with silver hair, and as much as he wanted to see Riku, he didn't know if he'd be able to keep his mouth shut about what he'd just learned.

Of course, Namine had said that she didn't really _know_, right? She could have been wrong, or she could have been lying...but he would still have that thought in the back of his head, taking up valuable real-estate.

"Huh?" He shook his head to clear it, turning back to Minnie and pulling his eyes away from where they had been scanning the crowd."

"I said that I'm glad you made it here safely. My portals are usually reliable, but you never know when an accident might happen."

"I'm glad you didn't tell me that beforehand." She laughed.

"Oh, I doubt you would have died or anything, but you might have ended up in Agrabah instead." Reaching up, she cupped his cheek with her large, gloved hand. "Thank you for coming."

Sora almost rolled his eyes at the ridiculous idea that he'd really had a choice in the matter. Come on, he was the Keyblade Master. When would someone _not_ be looking to use him for something? Not that he was bitter, he wasn't, but it had become a fact of life for him that nothing was really in his control anymore. If someone he loved asked him to jump off the side of the Twilight Town clock tower, he probably wouldn't even ask why.

"No biggie, you know?" The glimmer of silver had distracted him again, and he was looking over her shoulder, craning his head to see over the crowd. Because of their newfound freedom, people had already started filing out of the treasury, into the White Room and beyond into the mansion foyer. As they left, the room seemed to shrink exponentially—when the door had first opened, it had been the size of a large ballroom, but now it more closely represented his living room back home. And still, he couldn't find the source of the silver.

"I'm going to open up a portal back to Disney Castle for everyone, alright? I think we're going to have some things to take care of."

Sora stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, and she looked back to see regret filling his gaze.

"You know...about what happened to Mickey, don't you? I mean, I took care of it the best I could, but I didn't want to bury him or anything. I didn't have any right..."

"Yes, I know. He gave his life taking care of the people and the place that he loved—there isn't anything more fitting than that. I'm..." she stopped, swallowed, "I'm going to miss him...but he knew that giving people second chances is always dangerous. We both knew. But, that's just the way he was—he liked to pretend that there was something worth saving inside everyone. That Kingdom Hearts really is light."

"So, you don't think everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves?"

"Oh, of course I do. My husband and I were both idiots, that's why we got married." A single tear slipped down her rounded cheek, and she lifted up her hand to brush it away. It was odd, he thought, how different Namine and Minnie we dealing with the loss of the one person they loved most. Maybe Namine had shed all of her tears before, alone in that room, tucked away where no one could see her and no one cared. Maybe Minnie had, too, but it had burned all the more painfully because she had actually _had_ Mickey—had been able to hold him, feel his warmth and know that he loved her.

Maybe he had no fucking idea, because he could never understand how it felt without it happening to him, too.

"I'm sorry."

"I know, Sora. I am too."

And with that, she gracefully bowed out of the room, heading out into The White Room, and then out into the hallway. She smiled at Namine as she passed, and the white haired girl smiled back, but her smiled seemed much more forced, somehow. Why, Sora didn't care to know.

"We gotta go with her, ya know. It's our duty, now that The King's gone." Goofy patted him on the shoulder, pulling him into one last one-armed hug before he followed her out, Donald at his heels with a wave.

The room was empty now, except for himself. Everyone had filed out at some point in the last few minutes, and it had regained its previous size as that of a rather large broom closet. There were piles of coins that he hadn't noticed before, and various heirlooms that he assumed had some sort of value, but he really didn't care about that. He knew that he could take some—Queen Minnie would probably be eager to fill his pockets with it, if he asked—but he didn't want money. He wanted his life back, and that was the one thing he didn't think she could give him.

He wanted to be the captain of the struggle team again. He wanted to be able to go on the mat and pretend like he was beating the hell out of someone without knowing what it felt like to _really_ do it. He wanted to be able to go over to Kairi's house, and put his head on her shoulder and smell her, and she would have the same scent that the always had. He wanted to be able to bitch about his Destiny Islands History class like it was the worst thing ever invented and not be lying.

He wanted to be by the paopu tree, on their island, watching the waves push against the shore or Riku's hair waving gently with the summer breeze.

"Sora..."

He whirled around, and heaved out a giant sigh of pure _relief_. Riku was standing there, his back resting against the wall and his arms crossed, and despite everything, Sora suddenly understood that his friend was beautiful. It wasn't something that he hadn't though about before, because it was obvious that his friend was quite handsome, really, but, in that moment, he was so beautiful that it hurt.

Running over, he threw his arms around his best friend, pulling him in tightly. Riku's long hair brushed against his cheeks, and his arms were trapped between them, so it wasn't the most comfortable embrace ever, but again, he didn't care.

"I thought you were dead, Riku." He let go, looking into his friend's eyes, surprised to see indecision there.

"Well, I'm not. I guess Mickey had some sort of release on the ship and somehow we ended up here. Not that I'm complaining." His cold tone bit at Sora like a physical blow. Even if Riku wasn't..._in love_...with him, shouldn't he at least be happy to see him?

He wasn't sure if he was happy or not that Namine had obviously been wrong.

"What about Chip and Dale? Are they alright?"

"Yeah." He looked down at the floor, kicking his foot against the wall a few times. "You know, I thought you were dead too. Axel was going to get Roxas and just...fucking..._leave_ you there. I thought you were dead."

He didn't look up from the floor.

"Don't worry, Riku, I am one hundred percent functional! Except for the residuals from the pneumonia, but I'm getting over that."

Riku shot him a strange look, hooking his arm over Sora's shoulder and pulling him into a tense, one-armed hug.

"We should probably talk to Minnie about getting us home. Don't you think?"

Home, Sora thought, sounded like an awfully good idea.

–

If he expected that everything would suddenly go back to the way it was, he had been wrong. Oh, life went on like it always had, school during the week, free time on the weekends, but a lot of little things had changed, and those little things seemed to interrupt everything to such a huge degree that nothing was familiar anymore.

He had quit the struggle team. It didn't matter how hard he tried to tell himself otherwise, but the kill-or-be-killed instinct that had grabbed hold of him in his struggle for Kingdom Hearts was too difficult to ignore. Instead of simply being a game, struggle was now an imitation of something much worse.

Every afternoon, he would walk by Roxas' house on the way home. Deep down, he expected to see him and Axel there, even though he knew they were gone. At this point, he didn't even care if they were wildly making out on the front lawn—even that would have been enough to reassure him. Because, whatever way he looked at it, it was his fault that they were gone.

His grades were better than they had ever been. Mainly because he couldn't stand the thought of being alone in his room for the lonely hours before sleep, and now he spent the majority of his free time holed up in the library, doing whatever he could to keep his mind off things.

The worst thing, though, by far was that Riku hadn't spoken more than five words to him at a time since they'd gotten back. Frankly, it was driving him up the wall, and he was sick of it.

But, every time he thought he had enough courage to ask Riku what was bothering him, he chickened out. What if it had to do with..._the thing_? As much as he hadn't wanted to start thinking about it, he just couldn't help himself.

What would he have done if it were the other way around?

Should he say something?

What hadn't _Riku_ said something?

….Would he really have wanted him to?

It was on his mind all the time. When he woke up in the morning, when he went to bed, in the shower, in math class, eating dinner, _all the fucking time_. And part of the reason why he was so pissed off about it was because he didn't understand why it was such a big deal. Why should it matter to him whether Riku had feelings for him? It was obvious that he never planned to act on them, so it was almost like they weren't really there at all.

Almost.

That was why, Saturday afternoon, long after the spectators and participators for the struggle match earlier had left, Sora was attempting to beat the life out of a practice dummy in the abandoned gymnasium. He'd quite the struggle team, but that didn't mean he wasn't still using the sport as a valve for his frustrations.

"Fuckin' hell, Sora, how much damage to you plan on doing to that thing before you think it's dead?"

"Huh?"

He turned around, watching as Coach Dincht strolled casually over to him from the open door to his office. His fists were tucked into the pockets of his baggy shorts, and his face was turned slightly to the left, so the tattoo covering almost half of his face was obscured from view.

Rumor had it that Coach Dincht had been some big hotshot boxing star when he was younger, but Sora didn't buy it. If he had been so popular, what the hell was he doing in a podunk place like Destiny Islands?

"I think you killed it, Man." He sat down on the mat, sprawling his legs out in front of him and leaning back on his arms. It didn't take the pointed look he gave towards the space next to him for Sora to realize that he should probably sit down as well. The workout had been good, so his skin was covered in a light sheen of sweat, but the breeze coming in from the open doors and windows was doing wonders to dry it quickly.

"So, I guess you didn't figure out that I'm still here on Saturdays even though you quit the team."

How could he forget? Coach Dincht stayed behind in his office, doing paperwork or whatever the hell it was that coaches had to do when they weren't coaching, just in case someone came by and wanted to work on their struggling. But the door had always been shut, and he hadn't thought about it. Why_ wouldn't_ someone lock their office when they weren't there?

"You gonna tell me what the hell is wrong with you? Why you quit?"

Coach's feet moved when he was standing around—they always had. Whenever he wasn't doing something, he was twitching somehow. Rocking on the balls of his feet, clenching his fists, it didn't matter. Why he was suddenly so interested in this was obvious to anyone who wanted to see it, but he didn't care if he was stalling.

"It wasn't fun for me anymore."

"Wasn't fun? Two months ago, you were our best struggler! Don't mess with me, man. You loved struggle. Why did you think I picked you over Seifer to be captain? You were the one with passion for it. Don't tell me you quit because it wasn't fun. It was never about having fun for you."

And he supposed that was right. He couldn't truthfully say that it had been fun to struggle. It had been exhilarating, and had freed him, somehow, but it hadn't been fun. But he couldn't explain why he had really quit—even if Coach Dincht bought it, it was too personal for him to share.

"Have you ever had something happen to you that changes everything? Something so big that it makes nothing else seem important anymore?"

He didn't know what he was referring to. Kingdom Hearts? Larxene? Almost dying? His best friend being in love with him? It didn't matter. Each one of those was enough to turn his whole world upside down.

"Yup. Kinda sucks, doesn't it? What's the point anymore...your life is already over anyway, right?"

His fist shot into the air, and he splayed his fingers outward like he was trying to reach something that was just too far away.

"But you gotta know, life isn't over just because it changed a little. Hell, maybe even a lot. Chances are that the only reason why it feels any different anyway is because ya think it should. Like somehow the world oughtta change just because you did."

"That's not fair."

"Eh," the coach shrugged his shoulders, "it's cliché, but life's not fair. You gotta get over it, move on. Hold onto what you still have as long as you have it, and wish it bon voyage when it hits the road. You remember our slogan?"

Sora smiled a bittersweet smile, one which was as far removed from his joviality of a few months before as it was possible to be. He stood up, grabbing the struggle bat from where he'd dropped in on the floor. The sun was just disappearing below the horizon, and the breeze which had long since dried his sweat was just beginning to carry a chill.

When he reached the door, the weather outside was just as beautiful as it had always been.

"Yeah. Always struggle, and you'll have no regrets."

–

It seemed like everything significant that had ever happened to Riku had involved the ocean, somehow. Everything had started with it, everything had ended with it, and now, even once everything was over, it drew him just like it always had. He guessed it came from growing up in a place surrounded by water—it was in his blood.

He loved everything about it. Nothing was better than the way it felt rushing over his bare feet, or cooling him in the sun. He loved how he couldn't hear anything when he was underneath it. Hell, he even suspected that he loved how he could drown in it, if he wanted to. As much life as water gave, it could also easily take that life away.

Part of the reason why he was entertaining such morbid thoughts was because he was so depressed he hadn't even felt like getting out of bed that morning. Maybe if he stuck his head under the water, it would go away.

Sora had almost _died_. He would have died, if not for Axel, that bastard. And he didn't think he could take another moment of thinking about that.

See, for as long as he could remember, he hadn't just been _in love _with Sora. It was much more than that. Somehow, Riku felt as though the sole reason for him to exist was to keep Sora happy, to keep him safe. Whatever divine thing watched over them had put him on Destiny Islands exclusively to _be with Sora._ It was his one mission in life, and he'd managed to fail spectacularly. He'd watched Axel walk right into the darkness to save Roxas, and he hadn't been able to do a damn thing to help. Not that he would have hesitated to do the same thing, but that had been one of the concessions he had made to Mickey—no more use of the dark portals. He'd lost the ability to travel like that, and in doing so he had lost the ability to protect the one person who meant everything to him.

"Damn it..." he whispered, pressing his palms into his eyes like that would stop the pressure building in his tear ducts.

The moon's reflection on the water was beautiful, and the water lapping against his skin was mercifully cool, but he barely registered that. He was too lost inside of himself, and the sound of the waves had long ago lulled him into a pensive trance. Under his fingers, the sand was invitingly coarse.

"Hey." The quietly whispered word jerked him out of his stupor even though the voice it belonged to was unmistakable.

"Hey." Sora sat down next to him and looked out over the water, and Riku thought he could almost feel the body heat radiating from him if he concentrated hard enough.

"I talked to Namine...before I let everyone out. She told me something." That shouldn't have been surprising—when it came down to it, he'd told Namine a lot of things.

Poking his finger through the sand, Sora drew nonsensical pictures. Swirls and stars.

"She said that you're in love with me."

In that moment, time seemed to slow to a halt. Everything around them disappeared, and all Riku was aware of was that Sora was sitting there, not looking at him, drawing uncomfortable pictures in the sand.

It wasn't that he hadn't though about what he'd say to Sora if the other boy ever discovered his feelings. He'd prepared a speech, in fact, one which he couldn't have remembered a word of if he tried for the next five years. He'd practiced it in front of the mirror so many times that he'd worn a dip in the carpet. But that hadn't come even close to the reality of the situation. In that scenario, Riku had been the one to bring it up, not Sora. And Riku had had at least a small idea that Sora might have returned his feelings. But it wasn't like this, never like this.

"At first I thought she had to be crazy, that there was no way you were...in love with me. Why would you avoid me if you had feelings for me? Wouldn't you want to be around me as often as you could be? But the more I thought about it, and the more I tried to look at it like you would look at it, it sort of made sense. If you knew I would never...feel like that, it wouldn't be fun to be around me."

"It's not that..."

"Then what the hell is it, Riku?" Sora stood, towering over Riku for once in his life, running frustrated hands through his hair. "If it's not that, then why don't you seem to give a fuck about me anymore? Did I do something wrong?"

"No, Sora, you didn't do anything...I just...I fucked up, alright? I don't deserve to be around you anymore."

"If I'm so goddamn important to you, why didn't you think that maybe I might miss my best friend? That you're not the only one who's being punished when you ignore me, huh? Dammit, Riku, don't be such a fucking martyr! You're entitled to be happy too, you know?"

He kicked the sand, disrupting the gentle sound of the waves.

"I'm not going to put my own happiness before yours, Sora."

Sora stopped for a moment, looking down at Riku as though he were a puzzle with one piece missing, but the one piece left in the box didn't quite fit. Like even though he had known Riku their entire lives, something had just turned everything completely upside down. Then, quite suddenly, he bent down, and gently touched his lips to Riku's.

And, for that single moment in time, Riku thought he might quite possibly be the happiest man alive.

–

Whew! I'm going to post this way early despite getting no reviews for the last chapter, because apparently the raw-onion-power-of-doom in my tuna pasta salad makes the muses go into overdrive.

Also, can I get a hoo-ha for double digits? Hoo ha chapter ten!


	12. Now Would Be a Good Time

In his mind, Sora had two good, solid reasons to justify kissing Riku.

Primarily, he had kissed him because , ever since his discussion with Namine, he had _thought_ about kissing him an awful lot. He hadn't fantasized about it, certainly, but he had certainly thought about it. He'd kissed Kairi—hell, he'd done a lot more than just kissed her—and he wondered if kissing Riku would feel the same way. He couldn't imagine that it would—after all, Riku was a man. There wouldn't be any of the smooth curves and soft skin that Kairi's kisses had been filled with. Riku would be all hard planes and sharp angles, and where was the pleasure in that? Where was the attraction?

But his reasons hadn't been completely self-serving, to be honest. It had been those words, ones which so perfectly mirrored Namine's, which had made him finally realize something which hadn't really sunken in before that moment.

Riku _loved _him. Loved him as more than just a friend. Loved him enough that he would choose to never be with Sora if it made him more comfortable. Loved him with the sort of mind-blowing intensity that came along once in a lifetime if one was lucky. Sora couldn't bring himself to ignore that—in his mind, Riku deserved to know why it would never work between them just as much as Sora needed to make sure it wouldn't.

He had come to their cove hoping that Riku would be there. While Riku had always had the tendency to skirt around problems, or to ignore them and hope that they dissipated on their own, Sora had always preferred to confront them head on. That was why he'd come to the beach—because Riku was currently the one problem causing him the most frustration.

While he _had _come with the intention of talking things over with his best friend, he wasn't sure how a kiss had become a desired part of that conversation, no matter how much he'd been thinking about it lately.

As his first kiss with someone other than Kairi, he could honestly say that it was a very awkward experience. His knees were digging into the sand at rather uncomfortable angles, and his head was tipped downwards, and Riku's neck looked like it was craned so high it might snap off.

But...Riku's lips were soft against his, and his hand had risen to grip the back of Sora's neck in a steadying grasp. Sora was struck again, in that moment of awkward discomfort, by the fact that his friend really was beautiful, and for a second he closed his eyes and thought that maybe this might work, that maybe they could be happy together if they tried.

But then the moment was broken, and they were back on the beach with the sea-soaked sand seeping into the knees of their pants, and it was dark and unusually cold for Destiny Islands, even at night. Sora could see the goosebumps rising on Riku's arms, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to know if they were from the cold or from the realization that he had just been kissed by his best friend.

"Why the hell would you do that, Sora?" Riku's voice was strained, and he wouldn't look over. Instead, his gaze rested on the vast ocean in front of them like it could give him the answers.

"I had to know." It sounded lame, even to him. It had been selfish—offering a steak to a hungry lion and ripping it away after only a single bite—but if he hadn't done it then he would have spent the rest of his life wondering what it would have been like.

"Well," Riku said, grabbing onto Sora's shirt and tugging him down onto the sand, "I don't think you should base everything you believe off of only one experience."

The second time they kissed, it was much more comfortable all around, and Sora was too afraid to admit, even to himself, that it felt a lot than better kissing Kairi ever had.

–

Riku spent the next week alternating between feeling deliriously happy and morbidly depressed. Because, on one hand, Sora had kissed him, and it had been just as wonderful and amazing and any other appropriate adjective as he'd hoped it would be. But, on the other, Sora hadn't spoken to him since they had parted ways, far from amicably. After sitting in awkward silence for a few minutes, he had stood, brushed the sand off his pants, and left without a backward glance.

Even though Riku had never particularly disliked attending school, and even though he had enough make-up work to keep him studying for the next week straight, he just couldn't seem to focus on it. What did it matter if he finally got to kiss Sora—something which he'd been wishing for since at least eighth grade—if kissing him had made Sora too uncomfortable to function around him anymore?

That was when the morbid depression usually began to set in.

In his dream world, there had been certain inevitable events that would come if he ever actually kissed Sora. There would be hand holding, and there would be moments when he could go up behind him and rest his chin on his shoulder and smell him and not have to pretend like he wasn't. There would be chaste kisses, and not-so-chaste kisses, and 'so hot they'll burn your mouth' kisses. Life wouldn't be perfect, because a perfect life wouldn't be very interesting, but whatever happened, he could deal with it. Because, once he kissed Sora, he would _be_ with Sora.

Never, not even in his most distressing nightmares, did he kiss Sora with the end result of never speaking to him again. It had been too horrible to imagine, so he hadn't. And now he was beginning to think that might have been a bit of an oversight on his part.

It was only in the past twenty four hours that he had started to believe that maybe coming back to Destiny Islands hadn't been the best idea. Back at Disney Castle, maybe he could have helped rebuild—helped do _something_ other than sit here there feeling sorry for himself. But he didn't know how to leave, even if he had really, truly wanted to.

Turning over in his bed, he huffed out a breath. Not only was it hot and humid, his brain wasn't comfortable enough for sleep.

"Riku, Baby? Are you alright? You've been sighing in there for the past hour."

It was one of the many things that Riku hated about the tiny house that he and his mother lived in. Not only was it horribly small, it was also rather shoddily built and the walls were thinner than paper. His mother could hear even the smallest movement from her bedroom next door.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just can't sleep."

There was a moment of silence before he heard her turn over and readjust the sheets.

"Maybe you should go take a walk if you can't fall asleep. That always helps me. Something about the ocean makes me tired."

"Yeah, maybe."

He sat up on his mattress, resting his elbows on his bare knees. The light filtered in through the window, and the sound of the waves poured in on the breeze, calling him. Like most of the people who'd grown up on the island, he had a deep connection to the ocean. Standing up, he pulled a pair of jeans which he'd tossed aside earlier over his boxers. A walk sounded like just what he needed.

–

Across town, Sora was sawing logs. Not that he was experiencing any less inner turmoil, but his liked to play itself out through his dreams—it always had. In this case, his dreams were both disturbing and revealing, and he would have much preferred to be awake.

–

"_It's going to happen soon, you know."_

_Riku sat by their paopu tree, waving his legs back and forth over the surf. He looked upwards, away from Sora, into the grey, turbulent clouds._

"_What is?"_

"_I can't tell you. But I'm going to need you when it happens. You need to be here for me."_

_Sora sat down next to him, taking Riku's warm, calloused fingers in his hand._

"_How am I going to be there for you if I don't even know what it is?"_

_Riku's sad, green, grass-colored eyes turned toward Sora, staring into his sky-blue irises._

"_You'll know soon enough."_

_He left it at that, again turning his attention to the clouds floating ominously overhead._

"_You know, Sora, haven't you ever wondered why our names are so perfectly opposite? I used to think it was because somehow we completed each other, but now I wonder if it's not something else entirely. Like Kairi said."_

"_What?"_

"_In her letter—'There are many worlds, but they share the same sky.' Maybe...you were never mine to begin with, and you never will be. But please, for the sake of my sanity, please just be with me. Tomorrow. Next week. Whenever it happens, I'll need you. Not the sky, but Sora. My friend."_

"_I don't get you, Riku. Why can you never make things easy?"_

_Riku smiled, curling his fingers more tightly inside Sora's fist._

"_Stupid. It's never been easy between us—you know that."_

_Lightning flashed in the distance, lighting the sky with a burst of gold. The crackle of thunder soon followed, and the first drop of rain fell onto Riku's silver hair._

"_One sky...one destiny. Right? This thing that's going to happen...is it going to hurt?"_

"_Me or you?"_

_Sora reached over, wrapping his fingers in the fabric of Riku's vest, and pulled him close. He could smell Riku, and his nose connected with the soft skin of Riku's neck for a split second—just long enough for him to memorize how it felt._

"_Us."_

"_Yes, it will."_

"_Ok. I'll be there, then."_

_He leaned over and sealed his mouth over Riku's, ignoring the fact that the rain wasn't the only thing making cold, wet tracks over Riku's cheeks._

–

Sunday morning dawned bright and early, finding Riku still awake, sitting with his knees curled up to his chest and Sora still snoring away in bed, clutching a pillow to his face for dear life to block out the light. Neither had found any comfort, and any closure they'd gained had slipped away with the darkness. Neither of them seemed to care then the next day would bring school, homework, drama. For each of them, school had become something which held no importance in their hearts. For Sora, nothing in it mattered, and for Riku, only the swimming practices kept him attending. Swimming had always been the best way for him to forget himself, and he'd been needing it now more than ever lately.

The water had begun to lap at his feet because of the incoming tide, but he couldn't bring himself to move. His body was exhausted, but his mind continued to race like it was on some performance enhancing drug. For every part of him that wanted to leap up and run to Sora, to _demand_ an explanation, there was another part that begged him to stay still and preserve at least a little of his dignity. At least, he reasoned, he'd gotten two kisses. Two wonderful, heart-stopping kisses. What more did could he possibly expect to get from the deal?

He stood, cutting off his internal monologue mid-rant. Sora didn't owe him much of anything—he never had—but at the very least, Riku wanted an explanation.

But first, he needed coffee.

It didn't feel good to have a plan. It felt horrible, like someone had grabbed hold of his heart and was squeezing for all they were worth, because he knew that the closer he got to a confrontation with Sora, the closer he got to a very probable, complete rejection from him. But he had to do it. The uncertainty was slowly eating him apart.

When he got to the boardwalk, he slipped on his sandals, brushing his hair out of his face, and turned towards home. For the first time in a long time, he could appreciate the sunrise.

"Listen...whoever's up there...everything I've seen so far tells me that I shouldn't even bother believing in you, but...I guess there's a part of me that still believes that crap my father used to tell me. So, if you're there..." he held his arms up into the air, closing his eyes. "now would be a good time to let me know."

There was no answer. Not that he expected there to be, but it was still a bit of a let-down. After everything that had happened in the past few months, he thought...well, he didn't quite know what he thought, but that was beside the point.

The walk back to his home was a peaceful, quiet one. It was so early in the morning that no one else had forced themselves out of bed yet, and the air smelled fresh and sweet. He wasn't tired—he had no inclination to sleep, not now that he had a plan of action—and somehow the beauty of the morning seeped into him, like some ethereal thing.

_'Maybe', _he thought, _'this is God.'_

As he walked through his mother's garden, he noticed that the flowers were beginning to thin, and that the island's temperate winter would chase them away in only a few short weeks. But, the garden was still as beautiful as it always was. When it came to her garden, ang when it came to her son, Hana would accept nothing but the best, just as she would put forward nothing but her best effort. Riku liked to think that she'd been at least moderately successful with both, but he was a bit biased.

The back door was unlocked, because he'd left it that way fully intending to return quickly, and he pushed it open, careful not to slam the screen door just in case his mother was still sleeping. Usually by dawn she was up and awake, brewing the first of many cups of coffee that she'd drink throughout the day, but it seemed like she had opted to sleep in, instead.

He opened the refrigerator, grabbing the orange juice from the top shelf, and poured himself a glass.

_'Good morning, Riku.'_

"Huh?" He looked around, cocking his head to the side to listen. "Did you say something, Mom?"

He walked to the hallway, hearing nothing but the far-off brush of the waves against the shore and the twittering morning birds.

"Mom?"

Her bedroom door was ajar—she liked to keep it that way in case the cat ever needed to get out—and he pushed it open, his gaze first going to the bed. She wasn't there.

"Oh, well, she got an even earlier start than she usually does, I guess."

"...Riku? Is that you, Baby?"

The voice drew his gaze to the floor on the other side of the bed, where her green floral nightshirt was just barely visible peeking out from the bedskirt.

"Yeah, Mom, it's me. Are you ok?"

"No, Baby, I'm not."

–

Sora burst into the waiting room of Destiny Islands General, completely out of breath and sweating like he'd just run a marathon. His brown spikes were limp and ragged, and his face looked haggard and old, as though he'd aged in simply a few hours.

"I got here as fast as I could, Riku. What's going on?"

Riku had tried to explain over the phone, but some things were too hard to say unless you were face to face. Sora wasn't sure exactly what had happened, but what he did know was that Riku had asked him to come, so he'd come. The kisses from the week before were momentarily pushed into the background, because somehow Hana was hurt and that was way more important, in his mind.

"My mom had a...a blood clot in an artery close to her heart. Sh—she's dead, Sora."

_'Whenever it happens, I'll need you. Not the sky, but Sora. My friend.'_

–

Ok, I'm a moron. So sue me. Even though I clearly cannot keep up with updating this story regularly, I have suddenly decided that if I were to end it soon, all my hard work would be for naught. So, instead of wrapping it up tidily, I decided to throw a wrench in the system. (facepalm) Sooo...it's looking like this fic is far from over.

That may make some of you happy, and it may piss some of you off, but the one thing I have to stress is that, while I intend to finish it, updates might become few and far between. I apologize, but that's how it's going to be for awhile unless I can get my motivation back somehow.

Now, go review, please and thank you. :)

Also, I know it's short, but I wanted to end it there.


	13. The Heart That Beats Forever

Chapter 12-Final Chapter

Riku had always believed in Murphy's Law. He'd seen too much shit in his life to believe that good things ever really prevailed over bad things. They might seem to have the upper hand, sometimes, but it was just that. An illusion. He should have known that asking for some sign from the higher power was a mistake, especially without specifying what type of sign he was willing to accept. He'd gotten his answer—God does exist. And he hated him.

The day of his mother's funeral was not rainy. This seemed fundamentally wrong to him, not only because funerals should be appropriately dreary but also because of how much his mother had loved the rain when she was alive. She loved the way it nourished her garden, and made everything sparkle. The fresh smell of rain on the ocean was one of the reasons why she'd never wanted to live anywhere other than the coast. For the last day of this life that she was awarded, Riku thought she should have been given rain. Yet, it was almost unnecessarily sunny.

Sora looked fantastic in his suit, although for once Riku didn't spend more than a few moments dwelling on it. What was the point? His mother was dead. She was never coming back. The only person who loved him unconditionally was gone without more than a moments notice, and thinking about the other person he couldn't have would have done nothing more than pour salt in his wounds. He'd never understood, not until that moment, what it was truly like to lose someone innocent. King Mickey's death, although tragic, was not brought upon frivolously. He knew what would most likely happen to him some day. Riku's mother had no idea.

Murphy, as well as the esteemed higher power, were utter bitches.

"Riku?"

"Huh?"

He looked around, snapping out of his reverie just in time to see the funeral goers begin to turn away from the thick wooden coffin in front of him. The sun streamed into his eyes, looming directly in his field of vision like some menacing presence. He idly wished he'd brought his sunglasses, even if he thought they might be inappropriate funeral attire.

"It's over, Riku."

"Oh."

Most of the people who had come to the funeral had expressed their condolences already. He received so many pats on the shoulder that he thought it might have a bruise, and there was more lemon meringue pie in his refrigerator than he knew what to do with. As they all turned away, he couldn't help but hate them, just a little. As horrible as they might have felt about his mother's passing, they could all go home to their families and move on without too much of a thought. His mother had been the only family he had left. The only thing he'd be going home to was a cold, lonely, empty house.

"Listen, Riku, you know you're more than welcome to spend some time at my house. As much as you need to," Sora said, placing his hand on Riku's arm and attempting to catch his dull, unfocused gaze.

"I just...can't. Not right now. Ok?"

And he knew he really couldn't. There was no way he could handle people fawning over him, telling him they were sorry for something they hadn't done and couldn't have helped. He couldn't sit down to dinner and eat food cooked by someone else's mom. He just couldn't.

"Then at least let me stay at your house for a few nights. I know you're going to be lonely. Please?"

Sometimes, however briefly, Riku wished that Sora were more of an asshole. There really should have been a rule against being as utterly understanding as his brunet friend was. More than anything, he wanted to scream and cry about how unfair everything was, but he couldn't. Not with Sora there. No matter how often he told himself he was alone, he really wasn't. Because Sora was there. But he could leave at any time, couldn't he? He could decide that dealing with his gay, depressed friend was something he just didn't want to worry about anymore. It would be so easy. Just like the people getting in their cars and driving away, Sora could leave Riku whenever he felt like it. If he were more of a jerk, that thought wouldn't be so unbearable.

"You've already missed too much school because of me," he countered, weakly.

"Fuck school. Do you think I care about that right now?"

"You should. It's...it's your...senior year..." Riku trailed off, almost numbly reaching up to his face where he could suddenly feel something cold and wet making tracks down his smooth, pale skin. Huh. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually cried. Somehow, when he'd decided to embrace the nothingness, he thought he'd lost the ability.

"Riku..."

Suddenly, he felt Sora's hand move from his arm to his cheek, brushing away the tears that seemed to be bursting from some sort of inner well, where they'd been hiding for years. Everything seemed to accumulate on his shoulders in that moment-everything awful that had happened to him, everything that he'd done and everything which had been done to him. All the things he'd taken and all the thing which had been taken from him. Suddenly, it seemed like everything in his life had been for nothing, except to protect the brown-haired, blue-eyed angel in front of him.

"My mom's dead, Sora. She's dead."

"I know."

Sora kissed him, then, a desperate and relatively chaste pressing of mouth on mouth, hoping to drive away some of his mental pain with physical closeness. But, as warm as his friend was, all Riku could see was the big black coffin behind him.

"She's dead, Sora."

Sora stayed with Riku that night, and five or six nights after, watching as his best friend went through the motions of existing without really living at all. Neither of them made any more mention of going back to school-if it had seemed unnecessary before, it certainly seemed even more so now. He spent more time that week thinking about the future than he ever had before, and he'd come to some unsavory conclusions.

He was the Keyblade Master, and Riku had been thought so many horrible things within that other world that neither of them would ever fit into the mundane world of Destiny Island agains. There was no way that either of them would be satisfied with a desk job, pushing papers until they were old and gray. They could barely even function in this world anymore. They both held so much anger. And now, Hana was dead, and Sora had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do. As selfish as it sounded, Riku had always been the one to take care of him, and now that the tables had turned he didn't know that he could handle the pressure.

They spent a lot of time staring at the ocean. More than anything else, that distant horizon had always seemed to hold some sort of answer for both of them. The other worlds that rested beyond it seemed just out of their reach, but simply knowing that they were there was almost enough. More often than not, Sora had his fingers entwined with Riku's mostly-unresponsive ones, and that warmth provided the rest of the comfort that they both needed.

"I don't think I can take much more of this, Riku," he said, as they both watched the sun go down.

The next morning, Sora woke to find Riku gone, with nothing more than an empty glass in the sink to show that he'd been there at all that morning. As he helped himself to a slice of one of the pies packed into the fridge, he couldn't help the thought that maybe his friend wasn't coming back, and the sliver of ice that idea sent through his heart was enough to answer whatever questions still might have lingered within his mind. The only person in the world who he couldn't to lose was Riku. It was as simple as that.

As the screen door gently slammed shut, he turned around to watch Riku take his shoes off in the entryway. As the silver-haired boy raised his head, their eyes locked for a moment, and Riku's were more alive than he'd seen them in a distressingly long time.

"Sora, where do you think Roxas and Axel went?"

"I think they died, Riku."

He nodded slowly, as though he were trying to fit that piece of information in with whatever else he'd managed to pull together.

'That's what I thought, too. At first. But now I'm wondering if that's really the case."

Riku hadn't shown much on an interest in eating lately, but he pulled an apple out of the fruit bowl to appease his stupid hunger. The slightly withered fruit was nothing more than a reminder that life went on.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I mean, Roxas disappeared before, didn't he? When he merged with you? But he wasn't really dead. He told us that there were still certain things that he experienced, even if they were technically happening to you. And Axel only died last time because he completely expended his soul-energy. This time, all they did was use the portals to bring you back to the hospital. It wouldn't make sense if that was what killed them, because they existed here just fine before."

Sora, who hadn't heard more than a sentence or two out of his best friend since he'd met him at the hospital in hysterics, had a bit of a hard time even understanding what Riku had said. Fork dangling, pie forgotten, he simply stared, squinting a little as though that might somehow help.

"So...what are you saying, exactly?"

"I'm saying that they must have found a way back."

He looked so hopeful, so desperate to prove those words true. After all, thought Sora, Riku had nothing left here. Nothing except for Sora himself. Nothing but a house and a sports car that he'd been given by his father who would probably even forget his birthday this year now that Hana wasn't around to remind him about it. Why wouldn't he want a way back? Sora should be happy his friend even wanted anything anymore with how apathetic Riku had been lately.

"How do you know they didn't just disappear, Riku? How could you possibly know?"

"Because," he said, holding out the hand not clutching onto a half-heartedly eaten apple, "I found this."

Being naturally curious, Sora couldn't help but peer forward as Riku opened his closed fist. The skip in his heartbeat when he saw what was inside it, whether real or imagined, caught him by surprise.

"Where did you find that?" he asked.

"By the cove," Riku replied. And, sitting in his palm, was a single silver pendant that looked awfully familiar.

"Mom, I'm...I'm going away for a while."

"Going away?"

Sora shuffled his feet, staring at the ground for a moment before straightening his shoulders and looking his mother in the eye with a nod.

"Yeah. Kind of far away. And I don't think I'll be able to call."

After Riku had shown him the Keyblade pendant, they'd thought about leaving right then. If the portal in the cove was still open, it meant that they could go back. Just like Roxas and Axel did. It was...an appealing thought. The idea of leaving behind Destiny High, and the lonesome existence that both of them were currently looking forward to, was something that sounded so wonderful. The people they knew in this world were either strangers who really didn't know them at all or doppelgangers of people who existed in the other world too. It was becoming unbearable. But, Sora hadn't wanted to leave without telling his parents, even if they still didn't understand much about how time worked between the two existences. For all Sora know, it might turn out to be two weeks before he saw his parents again, or twenty years.

"Where? And why, all the sudden?" his mother asked, although they both knew it wasn't really sudden at all. Ever since he had gotten out of the hospital, things had been different. Tense. Unfamiliar.

"I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," he replied, grinning lightly. He had to smile-if he didn't, his mother would know that something big was happening to him, and wouldn't let him go. Of course, she could try to stop him, but it wouldn't make a difference, and he didn't want to put her under the pressure anyway.

"This isn't really the time to be cracking jokes, Sora! You expect me to just accept the fact that my only child tells me he's leaving and hinting that he won't be coming back? Is this because of Riku?"

"Don't blame this on Riku, mom," Sora sighed, running a hand through his hair. It was so much easier to argue with his mother when he couldn't understand her side of the picture. This time, he understood it all too well. He was asking her to let go of her child without so much as a single explanation. And yet, there wasn't one that Sora was willing to give.

"I don't know how you thought I was going to take this. Really."

"I'm sorry, mom."

She closed her eyes, letting out a deep breath. Sora had interrupted her while she was cleaning up the dished from dinner, so she placed the last one in the cupboard, threw the dish towel over her shoulder, and turned to face him.

"You know, I feel absolutely awful for Riku. Hana was a wonderful woman, and I don't even know what that boy's going to do with himself now that the only parent he has left is that rich father of his. I truly feel for him. But you know what, honey? Children are meant to lose their parents. Whether it's in high school, or college, or twenty years after that, almost every child is going to go through that pain of losing their mother and father at some point. I don't care you are. When I lost your grandfather, God rest his soul, it tore me apart inside. But eventually I realized that there was nothing I could have done. Parents have a right to die before their children do."

Sora locked eyes with her as she came close and put her hand on his shoulder.

"But it's not fair for a parent to lose their child first."

It wasn't that he didn't understand. He knew that she wouldn't want to let him go. But, again, he wasn't going to let that stop him.

"I'm sorry, mama. I'm sorry."

As she pulled him into a hug, he tried to ignore the feeling of wetness where her eyes were pressed against his chest. He couldn't help but wonder when everyone around him had become so damn sad.

"_Listen."_

"_Listen to what?"_

"_Can't you hear it? The sound that living things make? You know, in the dark portals, there's nothing. No light, no sound. Not a single thing, other than yourself, and most of the time you aren't even sure that you're really there. It's like you're completely blind and completely deaf for those few seconds that you're there."_

"_That sounds awful."_

"_It's not so bad. After all, everything's so dead there that you don't feel too much. It's only afterwards that you realize how beautiful the birds are."_

"_I never really liked birds too much."_

"_After using the dark portals, you end up liking everything that has a heart."_

"It's so weird. I mean, before, we didn't have enough time to understand that we were supposed to be saying goodbye to this place. But this time, it's like we understand it too well."

The waves crashed gently upon the grainy, wet sand beneath their feet as they walked along the coast, each carrying nothing more than a small duffel filled with the things they didn't want to leave behind. In the distance, they could hear the sounds of civilization-cars and trucks, mostly, with the occasional foghorn sounding from the far-off harbor on the other side of the island-but they walked along the much less populated side.

"You don't think we'll be coming back?" Riku asked, kicking up a bit of sand and regretting the action almost instantly, as several grains slid into his shoe.

"I think that even if we do come back, it'll never be the same. We'll never be the same. We don't belong here anymore."

"I guess you're right."

Riku understood, as much as he was capable of understanding something so incredible, that they probably didn't belong anywhere anymore. He supposed it didn't really matter too much anyway, though, since Sora was the only thing in his life that mattered. His mother was gone, and as much as he hated that fact, he knew he had to move on or he'd never be happy again.

"This was it, right?" Sora questioned, pointing to a gap in the cliff wall, next to where one of the islands many streams joined up with the ocean in a beautiful waterfall. The gap led to a little cave they'd played in very often when they were children in order to escape from the sweltering heat of the summer, and Riku knew that Sora had taken Kairi there on more than one occasion when they had wanted privacy. Today, he was hoping it would be there doorway to another world.

"Yeah. This is where I found it." In his pocket, Riku's hand was curled around the pendant that had once been attached to the end of Roxas' keyblade. He'd been out walking, trying to clear his head, when he'd found it, almost buried underneath the white sand. It was more surprising that he'd noticed it than it would have been if he'd just passed it by. He could have thought more deeply about the implications of that, but quite frankly, he just didn't care. Coincidence, fate, destiny-none of it mattered. He'd found it, and it was going to save them both.

"Are you scared?"

The silver-haired boy turned, looking out over the glittering ocean one more time. His fingers curled around Sora's, taking warmth and giving warmth in equal measure. Pulling him close, he brushed his lips gently over those of his best friend, eyes still locked on the distant horizon.

"With you by my side, why would I be?"

"_If the world is made of light and darkness, we'll be the darkness."_

"_Yeah..."_

"_At least the waves sound the same."_

FIN

There you are, folks. I know it's not the greatest ending, but I just wanted to finish this thing. I'm sure most of the people who originally read this story have long since moved on, but that's ok. I certainly took my sweet ass time.

Thanks for reading, and drop a review if you have something to say!


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